


Snowed In (Part I - A Winter Soldier & Black Widow Origin Story)

by aurora_ff



Series: Wolves at the Door [1]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Comics/Movie Crossover, Dark Fairytale Aspects, F/M, Forbidden Love, From Romania With Love (Sebastian Stan tributish), Howling Commandos (mention), Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Red Room, Slow Build, Spycraft, Wilderness Survival, romania - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:45:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 23,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_ff/pseuds/aurora_ff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the completion of a deadly mission in Yugoslavia, a young Natalia (Natasha) Romanov and the Winter Soldier/Asset are stranded in Romania's Carpathian mountains during a freak early-September snowstorm. Depending on each other for survival, their relationship changes in the crucible of each others company.</p><p><b>An original James "Bucky" Barnes / Natasha Romanoff tragic romance.</b> MCU/Comic blend.</p><p>Excerpt: <br/><i>Any other human being would have scoffed or given off some sort of subtle signal of annoyance. Not him. Nothing he did or said was calculated with anything more than maximum efficiency. He was nearly emotionless, and that frightened her more than anything else about him.</i></p><hr/><p>Notes:<br/>Early chapters based off the historical events of the documented <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Stamboli%C4%87"> kidnapping  of Ivan Stambolić in  2000.</a> (Natasha getting on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar in that "bad way").<br/>.<br/>Eager readers looking for the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1762147/chapters/3801454"> sexy fluff can skip to Chp. 22.</a><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At the end of June 2000, a bright young French woman by the name of Nadine Regnier was accepted for a transfer into the University of Belgrade’s political science program. Nadine made friends within the Democratic Youth organization, but was quieter than her comrades, and never on any official organization rolls. She said she preferred to keep to her studies.

In the start of August that year, a distinguished guest speaker lead several talks at the University. He was the former president of Serbia, Ivan Stambolic, deposed by his once greatest friend. She approached him after the end of lecture, asking follow-up questions in imperfect Serbian with a smile of enthusiasm and interest. Ivan answered them candidly, but there was something in his gaze that was assessing her in a way that was more than just a powerful man assessing the attractiveness of her body.

 _He suspects._ Which was fine for her purposes. Moves and countermoves.

It was not lost on Nadine that Ivan had a bodyguard with him throughout the entire lecture, but the bodyguard kept himself out of earshot. A private-hire then. She still could not be certain of the presence of other covert agents. Not yet.

“Monsieur, will you sign a copy of your memoir? For my uncle?” she asked then, holding out the hardcover.

Ivan fished out a pen from his suit-coat jacket. “And who is your uncle?”

“Jean-Claude,” she replied. “He’s very well traveled.” 

The Serb’s lip twitched. “So I’ve heard, …?” The white-haired man angled for her name.

“Nadine, Monsieur. My uncle tends to stay home, in Paris, but he keeps in touch with old friends. Dinner parties, oui?”

“Oh, old men like me don’t go out much anymore, mademoiselle,” he replied, but signed the book, in Serbian Cyrillic that Nadine could read easily. _To J-C.C., Best Wishes, I.S._

Nadine clasped the signed book to her chest with a large grin. “It’s an honor, monsieur. I hope to see you talk again.”

Ivan nodded his head. “I’m certain you will, Nadine.”

Nadine then found her backpack and tucked the book inside before heading out of the lecture hall. She was meeting one of her cover’s friends to have dinner and go out clubbing later.

So Ivan now believed in the support of the French GDSE. Likely MI-6, and quite certainly the CIA already had their fingers in the pie. Maybe even S.H.I.E.L.D. was interested in backing Ivan in the upcoming election against Milosevic. A Communist regime that owed you something was better than one that didn’t. The politics weren’t really important to Nadine, or to Natalia; she was pretty certain her lending from the Academy, this time, was not about the money.

She continued to convince herself that her choices to play these deadly games was all about seeing her influence ripple throughout history. To show the world that an orphan with not a ruble to her name could play with ex-president’s and dictators.

Natalia had a few short weeks to gather what she could from Ivan on his new “friends”, find out who else may be shadowing and protecting him, and then the Asset would be called in for his part. Belgrade was warm this time of year, but still Natalia felt a frisson run through her.

Why the Asset? _Why him?!_ It was tempting to think the Academy was testing her; seeing if they could cause her to fail her mission because she was still only the scared girl that they had sicced him upon those few months ago and not the deadly operative she was trained to be. Natalia reminded herself she had wounded him back before it was all done, tasted his blood in her mouth. She would _not_ be intimidated by him or the crushing power of his metallic arm. Never again.

In truth, Natalia bet the Asset was a part of this because their handlers needed to be assured of success with this one. He never failed his mission; never had complications of conscience. He was their perfect, perfect weapon.

 _I’ll be just as valuable to them as him. I’ll prove it,_ she oathed to herself, silently.


	2. Chapter 2

There was no point in bugging Stambolic’s flat herself. The JSO, Yugoslav’s State Security, had already done so; she was entirely sure Ivan knew it was bugged, and would find ways to communicate to his friends outside of his home. The JSO agents were pretty flagrant about their surveillance, and Nadine just shook her head as she observed the observers through a high-powered monocular in her own, more modest, flat (sublet off-the-books). She supposed that was why she and the Asset were here; extra insurance.

British and American popular songs played on her modest stereo as she made notes of Ivan’s and others comings and goings. Nadine was soon learning that a side-benefit to these assignments was the opportunity to experience culture in ways that she wasn’t exposed to at the Academy, and she soaked that up indulgently in the long hours of patient watching and studying.

Ivan had a wife and two small, pure-bred dogs he walked in the local park mornings and evenings. He smoked, just like a lot of eastern Europeans did. Nadine made note of his brand.

Then, one sunny mid-morning, she loitered in the park, reading one of her poli-sci texts on the bench before briefly checking her cellphone for the time. Nadine swore to herself; she was late for a meeting with her advisor. She slipped her phone in her pocket, and making double-time across the sidewalk, reached distractedly for her half-smoked pack of cigarettes.

That’s when she collided with her mark and his lapdogs. 

One of the dogs yelped. She yelped, tripped by a leash and fell to the sidewalk in a tangle of animal and human limbs. The bodyguard rushed to them both before Ivan could call him off. “It’s fine, Goran! It’s fine!”

Ivan’s voice was filled with actual concern as he grasped her arm. “Gospođice...miss?”

Nadine apologized in three different languages at once, her skin flushed with embarrassment as she hurriedly tried to gather her spilled belongings, still on the ground. Ivan reached for her pack of cigarettes, handing them back to her.

“Mademoiselle,” recognition finally came into his voice. “Mademoiselle Nadine, you are bleeding.”

Nadine looked down to her bare legs below her flower-patterned skirt, and sure enough, she had scraped her left knee up pretty good in the fall. She swallowed, feigned looking queasy at the sight of her own blood.

“My apartment is only a block away. I have bandages. Here. Take this handkerchief till we get there.”

She agreed shakily, and she watched as Ivan handed off both his dogs and her books to his bodyguard, essentially turning Goran into a bagboy. Sloppy. Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized a JSO trail, and possibly two other plain-clothes agents loitering the park that took unique interest in the “accident.” She took brief inventory of their features to return to later.

In a grandfatherly way, Ivan wrapped a supportive arm around her as they slowly returned to his flat. She did her best to press the handkerchief to her abraded knee, to prevent it from staining her dress or her shoes.

Stambolic’s flat was comfortable yet not ostentatious; he still held some of communism’s ideals. Nadine remembered somewhere in her mark’s dossier that he had once been the head the Yugoslav national bank. He pulled a chair onto the tile in the kitchen, and asked her to sit as he looked for bandages and antibiotic cream.

Goran just dropped her things on a side table and unleashed the two dogs. Ivan’s wife was not here, as she had planned.

Nadine sat patiently, even though her heart was pounding a little in anticipation. If she could succeed here, the rest of the op would fall easily into place.

She asked the bodyguard, “Can I smoke in here?”

As one of her hands was still holding the handkerchief to her knee, the bodyguard brought her a cigarette, and Natasha parted her lips slowly, tilting her head up to him, allowing him to slide it into her mouth before lighting it for her, gazing at him with half-lidded eyes. She read Goran’s lustful urge at that moment, and she knew that she was in control.

Nadine had taken a first languorous puff when Stambolic returned with the first aid supplies. She remembered that Goran was not her mark.

“I was going to offer you a glass of brandy, Nadine, but you prefer tobacco instead?”

She took the smoke away from her lips. “I should have taken the drink. Trying to quit these things. Start jogging and exercising.”

Ivan nodded, running a clean washcloth in the kitchen’s sink. “Me too,” he agreed.

Then with delicate care, he cleaned her knee first with the washcloth, and then applied the antibiotic cream with a cotton swab. Nadine decided not to make a spectacle of wincing and gasping.

She raised her voice a half-octave as she said, “You’re very good at this.”

The aging Serb finished patching her with a large adhesive bandage. “One of my daughters used to skin her knees all the time as a girl.”

Nadine felt the twinge of sympathy for this man and was halfway to crushing it down, thinking that the Asset never had regrets...but she decided to use it instead, mirror it back to her mark. Make her second cover as GDSE more convincing.

She offered Ivan her half-consumed cigarette. “I am sorry for your loss,” she murmured, softly. “About your daughter’s accident in Montenegro.”

Stambolic smiled softly at her remark, choosing not to reply. “I’m trying to quit these as well. And get more fit. Otherwise, my wife says I will have a heart-attack.”

Goran was the first to offer her an ashtray to snub the smoke.

Nadine suggested, “Then how about starting to run?" She let the words hang in the air. "With me? We can do it really early before the crowds.”

Goran began to protest. ”Sir...” but then Nadine cocked an eyebrow at him that hinted at a favor-for-a-favor.

Ivan chuckled. “Oh, I think I’ll be alright in the mademoiselle’s company. How about this Tuesday? I’ll need to get an exercise suit or two.”

When Nadine left Stambolic’s residence, she was trailed. She expected this. The JSO goon was no surprise. So she slipped on some sunglasses (it was a bright day after all), and started watching for watchers. The pedestrian and public transit trip to the University provided her plenty of opportunities. At least one face, a middle-aged woman, seemed familiar from the park.

In a few days, she was due to leave her intel in a dead-drop with her mark’s allies and Western contacts as well as the Asset’s assignments. If she was wrong…

Natalia reminded herself that she already was awash in a sea of blood. A few more liters would not make a difference.


	3. Chapter 3

It took a few early morning jogging sessions with Stambolic to piece together who his Communist party supporters were, all them having run-in with Milosevic’s ideology and ruthlessness either before or after Ivan had been ousted from his Presidency thirteen years ago. Having a few well-educated guesses as to his comrades gave her the rest. Regime building then, for when the old one fell. She began creating her laundry-list for her handlers.

The last heat of the summer spurred further protests in the Belgrade streets as the special presidential election neared. So far there was a democratic challenger, but no one in Communist party would put their name against Milosevic. 

None of her techniques could get Ivan to admit he would run officially, no matter how many students began rallying behind a bid. He was smart. She may be wired. Ivan was biding his time still...for something. She tasted it.

She better identified Stambolic’s two shadows and played a bit of cat-and-mouse with them in the public spaces of Belgrade until she had two decent photos of them. It was very likely her photo was circulating in their own networks. But she had the advantage; she was only sixteen, on her first high-profile mission. And the Asset was always a ghost. They had no idea what was coming…

That night she returned to the flat from the dance club having ditched everyone in the press of the crowds and a quick appearance change. The dead-drop was under a bridge of the Danube, well away from the protests; the Asset or his handlers would recover it later tonight.

Nadine did all the little things to sweep her presence from Belgrade, as if she were an apparition herself. She bundled up her surveillance equipment in a care package that would go to some fictitious brother of the tenant, who was studying in Oslo. She verified her pistol was well concealed under her workout jacket. 

She went to the roof and burned all the documents that had her cover’s name. Natalia decided she liked Nadine Regnier, brilliant, eighteen-year-old poli-sci student (even if she did give blow-jobs to babysitters named Goran in the back alleys of dance clubs).

She took out her cell phone and texted an encoded message to her KGB handlers, then broke it into dozens of pieces with a brick.

A bit tired, she took a cab back to the University. When the job was done, someone from the JSO would expunge all electronic and paper records of her enrollment there. Her cover’s friends would be told by a close relative she got caught in the protests, trampled in a freak accident, and her body immediately returned to France. With two months of preparatory study, she would be quickly forgotten.

The shower at the dormitory was hot and relaxing. Natalia never got any sleep the night before an op, not since she was seven and she escaped from the orphanage with…

“No.” she breathed, clenching her eyes. “Not now.”

She ducked her head under the stream of the shower and decided the humming herself a Don Henley tune was the best way to stay focused.


	4. Chapter 4

At 0630 Nadine inserted her earpiece and made the first transmission in English. _Why English?_ , she questioned to herself, but never to her superiors. “November to Alpha. Come in.”

The Asset’s voice, with the most words he had ever said to her strung in one sentence, came in her ear. “Roger. Alpha in position. Over.” She ignored the knot in her stomach.

Nadine sipped her coffee in a paper cup as the dawn light touched the buildings and the trees surrounding the Belgrade park. Nadine continued to read her French translation of _Catch-22_. She was tempted to cast her eyes up high for the Asset, just to find him. She had an idea of the angles he would use, but that may send clues to the targets, so she kept her gaze studiously on her book.

By 0645, Britannia and Washington had shown up in the park; her designation for the two enemy agents. Today, Britannia was a blonde tourist with a Japanese camera. Washington pushed a balloon cart.

The Asset had their photos. No need to point them out further except to sip into her cup and say a short: “Confirm targets and vehicle escort. Over.”

“Targets acquired. Van in position. Out.”

Natalia’s heart pounded. Her eyes skipped over words in her book, and she never comprehended. She couldn’t even tell herself whether she loved or hated her work at this moment.

At 0705 she saw Ivan Stambolic enter the park for their jog, and he sat on the bench where they typically met. Natalia got up from her own seat, a hundred yards away, and started walking purposefully towards the would-be-king. She tossed her book and coffee mug in the trash.

Natalia caught Britannia making an intercept line from the corner of her eye, her hand possibly reaching for a pistol in her camera case.

In a bite of irony, she depended upon the Asset now to help her.

She was only 20 meters away from her mark when she heard the first crack of the Asset’s rifle.

Seconds mattered now.

“Monsieur, come with me!” she called to Ivan, who had stood from his bench in shock and dismay at seeing a tourist crumple before him with a single shot.

She grabbed the old man’s wrist, and tugged at him. “Monsieur, now!”

And so she and the willing Ivan ran just a few more meters to where a white utility van awaited them, the side door already open for them with a plain-clothes stranger at the wheel.

There was a second shot as she ushered the old man into the back of the van and yanked the door closed. Washington.

She barely remembered to call in: “Sierra acquired. Rendezvous imminent. Over.”

The Asset’s voice again in her ear. “Wilco. Out.”

She wrapped her arms around the aging Serb as the van peeled away from the park and sped through Belgrade’s streets. Ivan seemed confused. “Mademoiselle?”

“It will be all right,” she lied.

In another half-minute, the van passed into an underpass and came screeching to a halt. 

The van’s door was opened again, and there was three of Milosevic’s JSO goons ready to transfer him...somewhere else.

In a rush of instinct, Natalia cupped Stambolic’s face, pressing a fierce kiss to his lips as he was dragged away from her before she could see his reaction. She didn’t know whether what she did was cruelty or kindness.

It was only the Asset, masked and shaded, that sat in the driver’s seat now. Doors were slammed. He drove the van with both speed and a certain honed precision onto the main road north out of Belgrade.

Natalia vaguely recalled him picking up a short-ranged radio, confirming in thickly-accented words. “Mission objective one complete. Attempt...attempt escape.”

She thought he meant "Attempting extraction." The Asset’s Russian was pretty horrible.


	5. Chapter 5

If they were just trying to get away, the Asset would not be driving so aggressively. But an additional objective was to make the white van a red herring, a misdirection for the intelligence community and the independent press seeking Stambolic’s kidnappers.

On the highway, cars honked at them as the Asset cut them off. Natalia braced herself against the back, looking out the square window for anyone following them. There was no one trying to keep pace, and after they pulled onto a narrow country road twenty minutes later, there was not another vehicle in site. 

The Asset pulled into an abandoned farm yard and idled in front of a dilapidated barn. “Open its doors,” he ordered without looking at her, and Natalia narrowed her eyes. When did _he_ become in charge of the op?

Still she was the one not at the wheel, so she complied, hopping out of the back of the van and using her weight to pull open the rough wooden entry, before he drove in. There was a rawness to the air that she hadn’t expected. The temperature had dropped since Belgrade, and she looked to the sky to find high clouds begin to creep in from the west.

The Asset turned off the van’s ignition and stepped out of the driver’s side door, slinging his rifle over his left shoulder. His metal arm was hidden by a black sleeve of a tactical uniform and glove. He walked with purpose towards her, his masked face unreadable, and she had an urge to flee him.

But then he passed her, as if Natalia was invisible, and then he began to close the doors to the rickety building.

She tagged-along, trying to keep up with the Asset as he then walked across the farm yard to what looked like a bunch of half-rotting hay bales. But then as they got closer, she realized it was only a few bales and really good camouflage netting, hiding a nondescript, civilian-style helicopter. 

When the Asset began pulling away the camo, she did her best to help.

“Where is the pilot?” she asked in Russian, and then regretted opening her mouth. _He_ was the pilot. The Asset didn’t even bother gracing her with an affirmation.

As he prepped the aircraft, Natalia felt entirely useless, so she simply sat on a bale and waited. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. The Academy had taught her so many things, but the practicalities of machinery were not one of them. She was barely proficient at driving a car, much less a helicopter.

Finally the Asset approached her. “Go in,” he directed, opening one side of the helicopter’s door for himself, leaving her to figure out the mechanism on her side. As she slid into the seat and buckled herself in, she noticed two mirror controls. Looking in the back seating area, she found a small arsenal of weapons and supplies she could not name.

He set a headset on her lap shortly after starting the helicopters engine. Any other human being would have scoffed or given off some sort of subtle signal of annoyance. Not him. Nothing he did or said was calculated with anything more than maximum efficiency. He was nearly emotionless, and that frightened her more than anything else about him.

As they lifted off the ground, sending straw in a whirlwind, she found the way to speak into the mic, asking. “Where are we going?”

“Odessa,” he replied.


	6. Chapter 6

The helicopter was well into Romania when their fortunes changed.

Natalia had never flown before and after her vertigo in the initial take-off, she was easily fascinated by the perspective of the scenery below. Farmlands gave way to forested foothills, and to her left, looking away from the Asset, bare and stony mountain peaks rose above the evergreens, glowing golden in the mid-morning light.

The flew in silence for nearly an hour, which was just fine by Natalia. The Asset studied his instruments, flipped a few switches now and then, and listened to aeronautical radio channels. She wondered how much he actually understood of the Serbian and Romanian and Russian.

The beauty of the landscape nearly lulled her into a sense of contentment and safety, washing away the images and sounds of violence she witnessed and perpetrated.

Then the chopping sound of their flight was quickly joined by another. The Asset looked across and behind her through the aircraft window, and Natalia whipped her head to the same vector. A black military helicopter was gaining on them in a parallel course. It looked armed with missles and some sort of mounted guns.

Natalia’s stomach lurched as the Asset veered their helicopter left and down towards the mountains, using a few of the controls to increase their speed. The enemy trailed them easily, this time attempting to come abroad on the right. She guessed they were trying to get a good look at the back seat, as if they were uncertain whether Stambolic was still a hostage.

That’s when the Asset unbuckled his seat belt, and told her in English, “You have to fly.”

Natalia couldn’t even summon a proper response. “What?!”

With his gloved metal hand, he encircled her right wrist and guided her to grasp the control stick between her legs. “Cyclic. Hold it steady.”

And so she swallowed and did, trying to keep her gaze on the approaching mountains, occasionally glancing at the one instrument that seemed to align with the horizon. She could hear her own pulse keep in time with the rotor blades.

There was perhaps another minute of where the black helicopter assessed them, flying level with them only a few hundred feet away. Someone on board their bird began flashing a bright multicolored beam into Natasha’s eyes. It didn’t seem lethal, it seemed like a signal.

“What do I do?!” Natalia called into her headset. The Asset did not answer. When she dared look behind her, she found he had taken off his own headset entirely, and was instead assembling something that looked like a shoulder-mounted projectile weapon.

That’s when the enemy aircraft opened with a barrage of bullets, which shattered a rear window, and she heard the rounds impact in a tattoo along the rear of the helicopter. As she ducked instinctually, the helicopter nose dived.

Cold, high-altitude air flooded the cabin, and she sucked in a breath. _Steady_ , she reminded herself, fixating on that, and pulled back a little on the grip in her hand. The helicopter leveled again.

Natalia was certain she was going to die. At least she got to kiss a worthy man before she did.

She heard a hiss and pop behind her as that Asset fired something at the enemy bird. Her nostrils filled with a peppery smoke. But an instant later her own craft shook violently, and she was suddenly deafened by a shock wave of sound. 

She had a sense of heat, her world spinning. Her seat belt was stripped from her as well as the headset. The Asset was mouthing something as he lifted her. ”Hold me?...” Was that it?

And so Natalia did, wrapping her arms around his neck as if she intended to strangle him, finding straps along his back to clench with her fists. Her legs locked around his torso as if she desired to squeeze the last breath out of him. His inhuman arm wrapped around her waist with its preternatural strength.

And suddenly they were free of the burning aircraft. They were falling, falling together.

 _Send both of us straight to hell_ , she pleaded, her eyes clenched shut.


	7. Chapter 7

In freefall, there was the pounding of wind and the cold, her ears still ringing. As Natalia prepared for her flesh and brains to be splattered on the rocky Romanian mountainside below, she thought of all the times she grasped at happiness, and all the times Fate, or God, or Whatever had denied her. She could never be good, never be rewarded. The blood could never be washed away.

 _Well, if there is a hell and a Devil,_ she thought ironically, _I bet I could still--._

The flutter of enormous wings interrupted her thoughts, and suddenly it felt as if she was jerked up again towards heaven. Arms cradled her, one around her waist, and another hooked under her thighs. Perhaps her sins could be forgiven. 

Natalia dared to open her eyes, and it wasn’t an angel with golden hair that had delivered her, but the Asset, his face still obscured with mask and goggles, his opened parachute softening their descent. Her stomach turned in revulsion, and she wondered if she should be fighting against him rather than accepting his rescue, even if it meant her death.

Then she convinced herself not to be so dramatic and assess the situation like a good operative. Control was rewarded. 

She and he were still a thousand meters or so above the treeline. The emergency parachute was round and had little maneuverability; where they landed was where the winds took them. The flaming wreckage of two small aircraft burned a number of kilometers behind them to the southwest, while they still drifted towards the rising sun.

So the Asset had taken better than an eye for an eye, striking down a superior-armed, enemy helicopter by allowing his own to be destroyed. As much as she disliked him, she had to acknowledge his incredible tactical ability. They were the only parachute in the air; the only survivors. Ghosts. They were phantoms until they radioed into headquarters, or there was some sort of beacon to pick them both up, which she hoped would be soon. 

Natalia imagined that back at a safe-house or regional headquarters, she and the Asset would debrief their handlers and go their separate ways. His debriefs must be very short; how he could manage more than a few words at a time was a mystery to her.

The dense, tree-covered ground was getting closer, becoming real. She swallowed, trying to figure out what to ask and how to prepare herself. Her question may not be answered at all, if it had no relevance. 

“How do we land?” she managed to say above the wind, into his ear. The most extensive conversation they had ever had was in English, so she used English.

He voiced neutrally. “Tuck in. Protect your eyes and head.”

And the only way she could do that and still hang on, was to bury her face into his shoulder. Why did the most practical thing to her survival have to be the thing she least wanted to do?

She huffed. “Then tell me when.”

A good half minute passed before he pronounced, “When.” Was that a joke? Did the Asset actually _joke_ , or was it just his literalness? 

She took a deep breath and turned her face into the hook of her elbow and the crook of his bionic arm, and then listened and felt the crush and crash and yank of tall evergreen branches slow their fall as the parachute and cords got caught by the trees. She thought once or twice she may be torn loose from his hold, but they clung to each other well.

The silence of the forest was brutal in contrast to the explosions and the wind. Natalia lifted her head, and then craned her gaze at her feet. Only a couple of meters from solid ground. The Asset must have made that assessment, too.

“Let go,” he commanded, and she just managed to free her hands before he dropped her unceremoniously onto the soft, earthy ground. She at least made a graceful landing, straightening herself with poise when her feet touched, stepping back a pace or two.

The Asset quickly loosened himself out of his harness and dropped beside her with only a bit of a stumble, which he recovered from almost seamlessly.

He then pulled a double-bladed knife out quickly, and Natalia nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Retrieve it,” he said in Russian, as if she was a dog. He held out the handle of the knife to her, and explained in English. “You must climb and get it. I am too big.”

Natalia bit her lip. Yes, it would be easy for her to swing up into the high branches and attempt to pull down the chute. She climbed and swung expertly, did he not remember? But who was _he_ to order what she should and should not do?

The Asset took off his goggles and mask, frowning at her. For the first time in a dozen weeks, she actually saw the direct stare of his storm-blue eyes. She felt the lance of fear once again, yet he did not have his predator's gaze. “It has to come down. A target for them. Useful to us.”

So it was English that would become their _lingua franca_. Her English was twenty times better than his Russian. So that’s how they would talk until extraction. 

Natalia snatched the knife from his hand, declaring “Fine! I’ll get it then!” She then held the blade by her teeth as she scaled the nearest tree to where the parachute was caught. It was a reckless way to transport something so sharp, she knew. But for some reason, she didn’t want to be dismissed by the Asset as useless or helpless or weak.

His opinion mattered to her in a way she was yet unable to admit.


	8. Chapter 8

It took her nearly an hour to cut a few lines and break the little branches to bring the whole drab-green parachute and its rigging down to the forest floor. Her hands were getting cold as she was exposed to the wind up in the trees. Natalia was just wearing a maroon track suit from this morning’s jog-turned-kidnapping, and whatever changes of clothes she may have had was lost in the wreckage of the helicopter.

Before she descending down from her vantage, she purposefully located where the Asset sat against the trunk of a tree. She let the knife's own gravity drive it into the soil, only a few steps away from his legs. "Oops," she declared, a bit disappointed he didn't startle.

As she came back to ground, she noticed the Asset had his right hand clenched to his left side. The black of his tactical gear hid the blood well, but she saw it leaking sluggishly from between his gloved fingers, glistening like rubies in the morning light.

“You’re hurt,” Natalia pronounced, unsure if she felt any sympathy. Her legs had just been squeezing him right below the wound. She looked down at herself and realized that some of his blood had smeared the pant-leg of her inner thigh.

“We must move soon,” the Asset said. “Make the pack fit you. Cut the harness where you need, save the straps and and any scraps. Stuff the chute's cords in first, but leave the silk out half-way. Then cinch it down.”

So gut wounds make him almost conversational, she noted, lifting her eyebrows briefly. She took up the knife again and got to work on slicing off the wide leg straps and pulling some buckles tighter.

“I think you should put your feet up, right?” she offered as she tried on the pack, testing it, and then took it off to make more adjustments. “That’s what they taught _me_.”

The Asset just gazed ahead as if he was looking through her and into the forest. “I just need rest,” he pronounced.

She shook her head and tossed on the pack again. There. That was a bit more comfortable for overland travel. As she shrugged it off one more time, she paused with cramming in the parachute to observe him. What skin of his forehead she could see, behind his mop of dark brown hair, was pale.

“I think we need to find you a doc--”

“No.” He cut her off, using a tone with her that caused her stomach to knot. “No doctors. And no stopping. Pack.” He shifted himself slightly to find something in a pouch at his waist.

Natalia pursed her lips. “Yes, sir, drill sergeant, sir!” she back-talked, feeling brave enough to needle him.

She thought she saw a corner of his right eye twitch before she returned to her task. It was probably from the pain of his injury. It was somehow comforting to her to know that the Asset could feel at least something, even if real, human emotions were lost on him.

When she was done she stepped back from her work, a little perplexed as to why she was told to leave the parachute half-out of its receptacle. She wrapped her arms around her and felt another chill as a small gust of wind cut through the trees.

The Asset put whatever he was looking at in a side pocket in his pants, and rose first to his knees and then to his feet. He wiped the blood from his right hand the best he could on his sleeve, and then he approached her.

“Give me the knife,” he said, and she returned it to him with a bit of reluctance. “Put the pack on again.” 

She obeyed. The parachute billowed in the back like a great cape. With both hands he then pulled the fabric up over her shoulders and around her, draping her small frame loosely in the material, like a shawl.

“Arms out. Give me the straps.”

And she did that too. His movements were almost elegant in their certainty. He then wrapped his arms around her, his eyes cast down. She trembled, but not from the cold. A belt then snugged against her waist and the Asset tied a knot in the front.

He stepped away, gave one last look at his handiwork, and then turned his back to her. He returned to that small object he had momentarily stashed in his pocket.

Natalia looked down at herself. The Asset had made her an improvised coat. Why she didn’t think of it before he did rankled her. 

The Asset was not supposed to be smart or creative; he was supposed to be the KGB’s killing machine, the Academy’s deflowering tool, and that was it. Natalia began to be confused about him.

For the first time since they landed, Natalia realized that her pistol was missing from her waist holster. She swore to herself. It must have gotten lost in the fall. She’d never find it, not in all these woods. So all they had for weapons was his knife.

Giving a sigh of frustration, she went to the Asset’s side, and saw that he was consulting a military-style compass in his left hand. He seemed to choose a bearing towards the morning sun. 

Without a word to her, he began walking through the pines, still doing his best to put pressure on his injury. When she looked up from the endless forest, she saw a uniform bank of clouds begin to swallow up the blue sky. 

She frowned deeply, still trailing the Asset, trying not to think about getting soaked with cold rain while lost in the mountainous Romanian wilderness.

When it did come, the first bits of moisture to fall on them were not spritzes of rain. No. Up here, even in late summer, it was snow.


	9. Chapter 9

Natalia’s world narrowed to a five meter radius around her of white snow and green trees and the Asset’s dark, ever-onward-marching figure. The flakes started slowly at first, and the initial ones melted quickly on the warmer surfaces. But then they started sticking. Thick globs that obscured her vision and stuck to the shell of the parachute wrapped around her torso. She kept her hands tucked in close to her body to keep them warmer. Still, her sneakers and socks were soaked through, and her feet ached. The only blessing was that the constant movement was keeping her somewhat warmer than staying still.

How long had they trudged? A half day? She could not tell. The sky was all the same color of diffuse gray. She thought there was probably ten centimeters of accumulation by now.

A shiver wracked her entire body in a way she had not experienced since she was a homeless street-urchin and living in winter on the Volgograd streets.

“I need to stop,” she called to the Asset. He just kept on moving forward, so she rushed to him and grasped his wrist above his birth-given hand. “Hey! I need to stop!”

He paused and turned toward her. His hair was black in its dampness, his eyes dull. He said nothing in return. He simply watched her. A few drops of his blood fell upon the ground’s pure-white canvas at his feet and she blinked at the image, transfixed for a moment as her mouth dried further.

Then Natalia bit her lip and looked for a tree to squat against. She dipped her fingers into the snow, scooping a handful towards her lips. The Asset slapped her hand and the half-melted slush flew from her stinging fingers.

“No,” he declared.

Natalia thought she may burst into tears right then and there; the wild had stripped her of almost all her composure. “But I’m thirsty! Aren’t you thirsty?!”

“Not snow,” he ordered. “Farther.”

The Asset then tugged a little at the parachute pack, pulling out yet more of the fabric and then cloaked her head with it; he locked the improvised hood in place by purposefully catching it in the zipper of her workout jacket.

She had no way to explain to herself how unmindful he was of his own kindness, his own cruelty. Her head, normally always observing and analyzing and figuring things out, just felt dull and hazy.

Turning away from her, he donned his goggles. The Asset then revisited his compass and found his direction, setting his soldier’s pace again.

The terrain was getting steeper suddenly, and the trees began to thin. Gusts cut through her improvised coat. She couldn’t see much anymore with the snow blowing around her. She followed him for about another half hour, another thousand paces, but then she stumbled, falling on her hands and knees onto loose stone.

Natalia didn’t have the strength to call out to the Asset this time. She couldn’t be as worthy as him, after all, weak and numb-witted. She couldn’t blame anyone for abandoning her.

She suddenly felt hot, smothered, mummified in the cocoon of the parachute. She rolled onto her back and began tearing at the knot around her waist, the hood around her head. Her heart raced.

The Asset was above her then, trying to grab her hands with his, immobilize her.

She cried out savagely, remembering to fight him. She had to fight him; somehow, it was imperative. Her gaze seeped with red. She wouldn’t let him…not again.

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” she yelled, beating at him. Why were her arms so leaden? He caught one wrist and then another in a steely hand.

The Asset undid his belt, pulling the black webbing. Natalia laughed and sobbed at once, readying herself to simply give in. Yet he didn't pin her with his body; instead, he took the belt and wound and knotted it around her wrists. She couldn't understand as he started lifting her.

Somehow her bound arms became looped around his neck, like before, when she had leaped upon his back to strangle him with an improvised garrotte, bringing to a close his so-called “lesson”. Her legs responded now better than her arms, and she wrapped them around his torso. If she crushed hard enough, she thought she could make him scream. Fight back, at every opportunity; was that not the first lesson of survival?

The Asset groaned and then his constructed arm hooked around her left knee, countering her pressure. He found his way to his feet. She was balanced somehow on him; he balanced her as he walked, carrying her. What did the Americans call it? Piggyback. Yes. Dimly she realized he was _helping_ her, not hurting her.

The next few hours were a haze to her of snow and the shift of his weight as he continued to trudge…somewhere. Did he know where he was going? Did he have any clue? Was he just picking a bearing at random, or was he like a homing pigeon?

At least, somehow, she didn’t feel so panicked or so cold. At least, if they died in this wintry storm, he assured they would die together.


	10. Chapter 10

Natalia had spent so much time in the white and the wind and the cold that it was difficult to comprehend something _not_ that. And yet, that is where the Asset brought her. It was black at first, and it was dry. She vaguely remembered being propped up against solid stone.

Somewhere in the dark was a brief metallic rattling, and then silence as the Asset shuffled past her, again and again. He wore some sort of glowing chemical light tucked into one of the straps of his vest, and she tracked it with her eyes. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She was still so very thirsty, so very tired, so very weak. She wanted to help, but all she could do was try to stop herself from quaking. Her legs were completely unreliable.

And then finally, a warm flame blossomed nearby. She heard his weight collapse to the ground with another one of his wordless and pain-filled grunts on the other side of the campfire. Then he didn’t move.

When she stopped shivering, Natalia used her teeth to undo the bindings around her wrists in short order.

She eventually crawled toward the fire. Three dented and old tin canisters, each about two liters in volume were placed against the ring of stones that contained the fire. They contained melting snow.

The Asset was prone on his back, his eyes staring up at the ceiling of the cave blankly, his lips unmasked and half-parted. His breathing seemed rather shallow and rapid. His face was slack and pasty and moist. The bullet wound in his side still bled slowly.

Natalia could wait no longer, and she snatched one of the cans to swallow a mouthful of the icy water. It tasted of dirt and metal, but she didn’t care; it was better than anything she had ever drunk. She finished one and reached towards another, but her hand paused on the metal rim.

“Are you having any?” she asked him.

The Asset did not respond. Not even an eyelash twitched.

Natalia’s breath caught in her throat. He was probably dying. He saved her from a fiery death and a frozen death, and now he was dying.

The water or the urgency of his plight helped clear her mind. She shed her pack and uncoiled herself from the folds of the parachute, kicking it away from the fire as a precaution.

Some recollection of basic field medicine came back to her. She pulled off her soaked jacket, stripping down to her tank-top. The wet thing wasn’t really keeping her warm anyway, and she rolled it into a bolster. She took some of the rocks from the fire ring and piled them near his feet. Then she lifted his legs up, and stuck the bolster underneath his ankles. There; more blood to his heart.

Natalia considered trying to strip him of his tactical vest and shirt, so she could better access his wound. But she realized that without his help, she’d have to cut it off of him. And they both needed their clothing as intact as possible.

She looked then for the Asset’s knife, her hands searching around his waist. She found where he kept it sheathed. To her anger and chagrin, Natalia also found her pistol. He must have stripped it from her during their fall from the helicopter and not told her. She’d deal with that later, she promised.

Natalia went to work to unpack the parachute, cutting a lengthy strip from its edge with the blade and another square to fold and use as a bandage.

She stoked the modest fire higher to give her more light, and then used a little of the water to do her best to clean her hands. She explored a little of his wound. It seemed the huge bullet had passed completely through the flesh just above his left hip. At least there wasn’t a slug still inside him. If it had been her that was shot with the .50 caliber, she’d have died hours ago.

Dressing his wound was awkward because he was so heavy compared to her. Still, she managed to scoot behind him and prop his torso up against her legs for her work. By the time she was done, she has nearly used all her strength.

But she must get them more water; water was their life. Natalia forced her way to her feet and, with two of the cans, she made her way to the entrance of the cave. The way in was simply a slit that a full-grown man could barely slide past. She was completely baffled how he ever found this place with the visibility as piss-poor as it was.

The snow was still coming down thickly, the wind fiercely howling against the ravine. In the receding daylight by the entrance, she made a quick study of the tin she held. The faded printed lettering on the metal read: _U.S. ARMY FIELD RATION - TYPE C._

She furrowed her brow and dove into the cold. She packed as much snow as possible into the containers before she returned to the Asset, who still gazed at the cave’s ceiling. She watched his eyes flicker back and forth briefly, a blink or two.

The last tin’s water was now luke-warm to her touch, the snow having melted down to only a few cups. Natalia knelt beside the Asset and attempted to lift up his head to pour a bit of liquid in his mouth, but he just ended up sputtering and choking, the coughing taking the toll on his injury.

He _has_ to drink somehow. He has to have fluids to help replace all the blood he’s lost. And she doesn’t have a cup or a straw…

Natalia scoffed to herself and muttered unhappily. “Fine, then.”

From the tin she took a big guzzle of the water. Holding it in her mouth, she bent down to the Asset, cupping his jaw with her hands. She sealed her lips on his own, and then let the liquid gradually channel into his mouth and down his throat. She did it again and again until the can was drained.

She turned away and reached for the second one, hoping that the snow has melted it enough to drink. It was cold, but not icy. So she took a large sip and returned to her task. This time was different. This time the Asset’s lips responded to her own, arching his neck to make their contact last for a moment beyond the exchange of fluid.

When she sat up, his eyes weren’t looking up at the ceiling anymore. They were looking directly, _intensely_ at her.

“More. Please,” he whispered. 

The Asset never whispered. The Asset never used the word “please.”

Natalia nodded gravely and took another mouthful of water. But when he finished drinking from her, their mouths did not separate. To her perplexity, they kissed, and it was gentle and slow and everything she should _not_ be doing with him, not after...Still, the last of the cold fled her body, replaced by a growing thrill in her blood as her lips lingered upon him. His tongue touched hers, and he tasted like frost and gunpowder. She heard herself moan; whether it was out of desire or self-contempt, she could not discern. His body shuddered then, and without warning he turned his head away, ripping his lips from hers.

Natalia frowned.

“Heat more snow,” the Asset ordered without looking back at her. “Then try to sleep.”

Discouraged and a little angry, Natalia stood up quickly. “Sure,” she agreed. “But I’m taking my gun back, and I'm keeping it.”


	11. Chapter 11

The first night in the cave was difficult. He and she slept uncomfortably on the rocky floor for only a half-hour or hour at a time before the fire needed to be tended. Natalia wanted to make it bigger to ward off the cold and the dark, and the Asset kept on insisting that they conserve the wood he had stockpiled.

“The fuel doesn’t last,” the not-quite Asset explained, propping himself slowly and painfully on his elbow to take a sip of water from one of the dented tin cans they used for melting snow. “And you’ll have to gather the next batch, ‘cause I’m still pretty laid up.”

Natasha just stared at him from across the flickering yellow and orange flames, her legs tucked into her chest, a part of the parachute wrapped around her shoulders. Since their kiss, she witnessed in fascination his chameleon-like shifting between weapon to human to weapon again.

Mostly he was the Asset, with his unreadable face and his deadly eyes, either silent or delivering orders. But other times, like now, he was warmer and more talkative, as if she were a comrade-in-arms.

He was a puzzle, and if Natalia took pride in anything, it was in solving mysteries. She just had to trust her instincts.

“What is your name?” she voiced over the campfire.

The dark-haired man coughed once, wincing, and he averted his gaze briefly. “Excuse me?”

Natalia hid her delight at finding something that unsettled him. “Your name. I’m Natalia. Natalia Romanova.” And then she fidgeted. “I thought we should know each other’s names...falling from the sky together and everything…”

“Well…” he delayed.

“Well?”

He took in a deep, rattling breath. “They call me _Zimniy Soldat. Voyen. Prizrak._ Asset.”

Natalia shook her head. “Winter Soldier? Berserker? Ghost? Those are roles, not names. Not what your parents gave you at your birth. What is your _name?_ ”

Anguish passed over the man’s face as he scoffed. His eyes were glassy.

Then the Asset took over again and his visage froze. “More water.” He tossed her the empty canister.

“Alright,” she acquiesced, rising and scooping up the tin. As she turned her back to him and walked towards the cave’s exit, she pondered what it all meant. She wanted to know everything about the man behind the walls of the killer, the warmth locked away beneath the cold.

If her Academy trainers witnessed this...But they wouldn’t, because they were stranded in the middle of nowhere. She was never allowed to chose anyone for herself; he probably wasn’t either. There were just marks and all attraction was a fake, a lie. The kiss she shared with him didn't feel like a deception. It felt pure and precious, something of her own. It shouldn't be possible, but something defiant was taking root in her heart.


	12. Chapter 12

The next day just brought more snow, with little sign of the storm abating. It piled up just below Natalia’s knees and sometimes drifting higher. 

Once, while the Asset slept, she used more of the parachute material and cordage to devise make-shift over-covers for her feet and legs, so when she foraged for wood or other things outside, her pants and socks were no longer thoroughly soaked through. She borrowed his leather gloves to keep her hands warmer, even though they were several sizes too large.

As she walked past him to add a few more dead branches to their stockpile, his voice sounded in the cave, clear and approving. “You are learning.”

Natalia turned towards him, not quite letting herself smile. “I am trying,” she returned. She eased herself down beside him, and looked into the fire rather than his face. “I guess food is the next concern,” she ventured.

Her stomach had been growling since last evening, but she had ignored it. In the orphanage, she was commonly punished by having food withheld from her. Hunger was one of those things she had made peace with long ago, or so she thought.

“Yes. That.” She heard him shift slightly and unzip a pocket somewhere on his vest. “Here.”

Natalia looked to his outstretched metallic hand and found some sort of plainly packaged nutrition bar.

_In another life, a dark-haired boy had offered her an apple in friendship._

Her breath hitched in her throat and she turned away from him before he could see the upset etched upon her face.

“Here,” he insisted, some of the Asset’s edge returning to his tone.

She swallowed and shook her head, closing her eyes against the gift. “No. You need the calories to heal,” she returned stubbornly. “Think about it, _Soldat,_ and do the smart thing. Don't pretend to be a gentleman after what you did to me."

He was silent for a very long time. The Asset could not be hurt by mere words, but she sensed something vunerable underneath. Eventually, he stated, “When you go out, bring back a few handfuls of fresh pine needles. We’ll boil them for tea and to clean the wound.”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ to go out,” she countered, petulantly, half-lost in bitter memories.

Even injured, he moved incredibly fast. Before she knew what was happening, his steel arm locked around her, and the blade of his knife pressed against the side of her throat. She gripped his arm and tried to struggle away. His hold was so tight, she had no way to reach her pistol.

The Asset’s breath was hot in her ear, his body hard against her back. “Go out. Get the pine. Understood?”

She nodded, fright rising in her throat. “Yes!”

The knife disappeared and he released her. 

Natalia bolted so quickly out of the cave she must have jumped the fire to do so.


	13. Chapter 13

Natalia returned about half an hour later with the pine needles and another armload of dead-fall to sustain them. She entered the cave slowly, her senses on edge. She had no idea of which version of him she would find, the monster or the man.

When she looked to the fire, he was not there, which alarmed her. “Where are you?!” she called into the cavern. Natalia realized she had no idea how far the back of the cave went. Exploring it really hadn’t been a priority.

“A minute,” was his reply, echoing somewhere in the darkness. So the man again.

She furrowed her brow and then realized that he must be relieving himself, and supposed that was probably a good sign, given his condition.

“I’ll be by the fire, getting the tea started,” she called back. It seemed that most of her waking hours were devoted to retrieving firewood and melting snow in those empty, aged ration cans, over and over again.

She filled one to the top, setting it closer to the coals, then ripped the pine needles into smaller bits before dropping them to let them steep. At least this effort was new.

Her companion eventually stepped back into the flickering light, and very slowly he lowered himself back down to a sit. He examined the container with the needles to see how it was coming along. This time when he gave her his knife, he drew it slowly.

“You’ll need to cut another bandage from the chute.”

Her fingers brushed against his ever-so-slightly when she took the blade from him. His eyes then cast downward, almost as if to apologize for threatening her earlier.

“Okay,” she agreed, and then went to work.

He watched the tea until it boiled, and then using his folded glove, he moved it away from the fire to cool.

Natalia returned with her handiwork, kneeling down beside him. “Are we ready?” she asked, cleaning her hands with a bit of regular water from another tin.

He nodded, gravely. “I think so,” lifting up his arms to allow her access to the old improvised bandage that she had wound around his side, over his clothing.

Natalia’s fingers were nimble, and she worked carefully. When she came to the wound site itself, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the blood that had seeped through the silk was stiff, not wet. She just prayed removing the bandage to clean the wound wouldn’t cause it to bleed freely again. She worked with all the gentleness she could manage, but still a hiss escaped his clenched teeth now and then.

“It’s looking better,” she tried to offer as some sort of consolation, freeing the last of the bandage from him. She folded it haphazardly and set it aside. They’d probably end up washing and reusing it at some point.

“Now the vest,” he said, directing her to what buckles and straps to release.

Natalia discovered that his vest held a number of cleverly hidden pockets within it, and she wondered what they may be containing. He had to start the fire with _something_. Still, her curiosity would have to wait. She examined the holes in the vest where the bullet had entered and exited.

“I think we may have to soak it a little. There’s just a lot of dried blood and... I can’t really get a close look.”

Natalia used a bit of the bandage she had just cut to dip it into the pine-scented water, and then she squeezed the warm liquid out of it like a crude sponge. It took probably ten minutes of this and tender probing to separate the vest from his shirt, and the tatters of his shirt from his flesh. She found herself beginning to hum a song, something soothing, while she worked.

Her patient laced his silvery hand together with his birth-given hand and rested them on the top of his head, hardly moving except to breathe. Since she started singing, his eyes were closed.

“I think we can remove the vest now,” she said, ending her crooning. When he finally shrugged it off, he gave an audible sigh of relief. 

His black, long-sleeved shirt was much easier to negotiate, and Natalia helped him pull it off with his arms stretched to the ceiling. So he wouldn’t have to move much, she rose to her feet, taking the hem of the shirt with her. Natalia was keenly aware of her knuckles dragging along his skin, his abdomen muscles, his ribs, and finally the cool, silken surface of his articulated bionic shoulder and arm.

Bare-chested, it was not to the bullet wound in his side to where Natalia’s gaze fell. It was to his right shoulder, where she had, only a few months ago, stabbed him in the defense of her despoiled body. 

There was no scar. 

She blinked, thinking it was a trick of uneven firelight, so she actually ran her hand over where she had thrust the blade.

“Where is it?!” she blurted, feeling dizzy.

“Where is what…?” he asked, neutrally.

Natalia swallowed. “The scar. When I stabbed you. When you….?!” She then looked to his face, and saw nothing but confusion in his features and in his slate-blue eyes.

“‘When I…?’” he prompted softly, narrowing his gaze, as if he sensed that something was beginning to upset her.

All the air was pushed out of her lungs, and she was back in that dark labyrinth. Only now that maze and all its shadows was inside her skull. No. It couldn’t have been a dream, a nightmare; she lived with bruises for weeks.

“You don’t remember,” she choked. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “They did something to you and you don’t remember.”

Her eyes stung and she bit her lip. She was mad and scared and relieved and excited all at once.

“Natalia,” he whispered, and her name on his lips sent a quiver through her. She thought he may then say something else, even touch her, but his practicality returned for them both. “Natalia, you need to finish what you started and patch me up. Can you do that?”

She gasped, the wash of emotions abating. She supposed she was just a silly child to him, made hysterical by the isolation of the cave and the beautiful, freakish, deadly mountain snows.

So she cast her gaze down and didn’t look him in the face again as she returned to washing and bandaging him.

She used more than half of the tea to wash away the caked blood from his side, till there was only left two angry, dark punctures; two bruised bulls-eyes in front and in back. An ordinary man shouldn’t be able to take the type of damage he did from that oversized round and still walk away. His innards should have been in tatters. 

As she wound the fresh bandage around him, she couldn’t help but speculate. Did he know how he came to be the Asset? Or did they take that away from him, too?


	14. Chapter 14

They both napped for a little while, him using his vest as a pillow while she used the parachute pack. When Natalia woke, it seemed that he had already been up-and-about again, tending to the fire, making more pine-needle tea. He may even gone outside.

She sat up, cross legged, stretched and kneaded out the stiffness from sleeping on the bare ground. He lowered himself down to a cross-legged sit himself, sitting beside her.

“Hey,” he greeted, casually. His skin now had some color to it, and his eyes seemed bright and daring. “Good news. The storm has stopped.”

Natalia shrugged briefly but didn’t want to hope too much. She was Russian, after all. “When can we leave?”

He sighed, but his voice seemed colored with optimism. “Not for a few days yet. We have to equip and supply ourselves.”

He retrieved a canister from where it warmed by the fire, and set it between them. From a pocket in his black combat pants, he fished out the untouched nutrition bar and tore back its wrapping. “I think we should first have a celebratory meal. Things will get better from here.”

Natalia didn’t know what to make of him, of his easy and confident demeanor. So she just made note of how his stubble was becoming a beard, the way his hair fell in his eyes. With his shirt sleeves covering both of his arms, he didn’t come across as so terrifying.

He broke the bar in half and offered her a portion. Tentatively, she reached for it with a “thank you.” It was somewhat chewy, somewhat sweet, and yet pretty bland. Still, she was taken aback by how much her body craved it.

“ _Botze moy!_ ” she found herself exclaiming. “My god, this is good!”

He passed her the pine needle tea, sharing the canister. “Amazing, huh? Wait till you try some rabbit. Or if we get lucky, maybe one of the native deer.”

With a little bit of food in her stomach, Natalia felt better than she had for days. She licked her fingers, sucking any flavor she could from them, and had the subtle feeling that he was enjoying watching her as he sipped the pine tea. Maybe it was the sugars hitting her bloodstream; but she flushed.

“I can handle the water from here on out, but I need you to do some more of the gathering and also a bit of tracking,” he said, reaching for a piece of black charcoal from the edge of the fire ring. “When you go out, start looking for really long and supple green branches, bendy enough so they can be tied into a hoop. About as long as your arms are wide, if you can. If you can’t, do your best and we’ll improvise. And while you do that, also look for rabbit or animal tracks.” 

He sketched a crude example of what a few tracks should look like in the snow, and then explained that she should look for places where multiple tracks converged into game-trails. “That’s where we will set the snares. I’ll show you more about that when you come back. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” she responded with a bit of playfulness, feeling energized and up for the task.

As soon as she spoke, an expression she could not define passed over his features. His lips lost their self-assured curve, his eyes fluttered closed and then open again. He swallowed, and then it was gone.

“You don’t need to call me ‘sir’, Natalia,” he said softly, his gaze cast down. “I’m not your CO.”

Inquisitively, she reached out to brush his right arm with her fingers.

“Then what _should_ I call you?” she asked, her pulse quickening slightly.

He scoffed, his shoulders slumping, his hair now obscuring his face. “I don’t know. Pick something.”

“You want me to give you a name?” she whispered. “A _real_ name?”

“Yes,” he choked out, hoarsely, and it seemed to Natalia he may be on the verge of breaking down. “Please.”

She suddenly felt a rush somehow of sympathy. Of understanding how his handlers and hers stripped them of almost everything but their mission. Natalia uncoiled her legs and wrapped her arms around his torso, mindful of his wound. He immediately leaned into her, burying his face in the hair at the base of her neck. She could feel him tremble, and her heart demanded of her to help him.

“ _Alexei,_ ” she proffered. It was the first name that came to her mind other than...and that she could not do, even if it would resurrect him fully into the body of the man in her arms. “Alexei.”

He repeated back “Alexei,” nodding. That seemed to steady him, strengthen him, give him something to grasp, someone to _be_ other than the Winter Soldier.

“It’s Russian,” he observed into her hair.

“It was once a prince's,” she confirmed. “And if you are going to keep it, I think we should work to make you much, much better at speaking his tongue. Agreed?”

“Okay,” Alexei murmured, saying his name to himself again. His own arms slid around her, his hands pressed ever-so-gently against her back, as if he was still aware of how intimidating he could be to her.

Natalia smiled, tears wetting her eyes for reasons she could barely explain to herself. She just knew that she and he were joined now in some sort of mysterious way only priests and poets understood. She just knew she was feeling something dangerous.


	15. Chapter 15

Natalia slipped out of the cave for her next mission. It was true. The snow had stopped, but not before adding a few more centimeters of accumulation, so she was wading through most of it at knee-height. The cloud cover was lifting, and the afternoon sun reflected off of the powder with a near-blinding glare.

She slipped on the As---no, _Alexei’s_ goggles with a sigh of relief. She had heard somewhere about snow blindness, maybe read it in a book. She had no concept of it in reality until she was deep in it, a vast and beautiful white landscape that sparkled, glistened, and glared.

As she waded down the slope that lead to the first of the pine trees, she began to work in her mind how she might craft makeshift eye-protection for herself, when she and he would leave their shelter for somewhere better as soon as he was mended, and as soon as they were prepared.

Slogging through the snow was difficult, and her heart raced. The air, though still brisk and thin, was welcome to her lungs.

Supple green branches at the length he suggested were hard to come upon unless she wanted to spend hours descending to a lower elevation, so she made due with gathering shorter lengths, bundling them in the parachute pack to take back with her.

She spent some time stripping a few pine trees of their inner bark. Alexei said it could be eaten if roasted.

Natalia also watched for game tracks, and mostly found those of small birds hopping lightly on the surface of the snow. She wandered about a little more, breaking off dried and dead branches as she went, taking them with her. Alexei, in so many subtle instructions, taught her how to see opportunities in this landscape.

Damp, tired, and starting to chill, she then headed back to their shelter with her finds. A trodden down area had formed over a few days around the entrance where they came and went and gathered snow. She began to think of it as the front porch.

Alexei had built the fire high for once, and as she dropped her load and began taking off the makeshift over-garments, she understood why. He had undressed down to his underwear (he was a boxer-briefs guy, go figure), and his shirt and pants and socks hung dripping on an improvised laundry line. His skin had a damp sheen to it too, as if he had given himself a decent scrubbing. He had bound his hair up into a high ponytail.

“Wash day, hmm?” she said, passing him back his goggles and their -- no, _his_ knife.

“I’ll rinse yours too,” he offered. “It’s mostly my blood on them anyway.”

She frowned, briefly, considering. It would be good to feel a bit more fresh, she guessed. And really, what was the use of being shy around him? So she gave him her workout jacket, pants, tanktop and socks. She wrapped the parachute around her to keep a little warmer.

As she watched him use a textured stone like a washboard, choosing a part of the cave where it naturally sloped, Natalia recounted to him her failures and her successes of the outside. “I couldn’t find many tracks. I’m sorry. We just have pine bark.”

Alexei didn’t seem too concerned. “Well then, that’s breakfast.” 

Still she bit her lips, feeling the pinch in her stomach. She didn’t buy his confidence, not this time. Her worry must have been written across her face, because he rose from his work and approached her slowly, holding out his right hand. “Hey,” he chided, good-naturedly. “We are a long way from cannibalism.” 

She couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose playfully at the absurdity, and he then flashed her a roguish grin, a gleam of white teeth.

Alexei’s hand touched her upper arm, ever so briefly. “Natalia, I’d really like to hold you again.”

She went from mirth to torment with that bare and open request. She couldn’t form a coherent thought. Maybe it was because they were nearly undressed. With skin touching skin, what could start as an innocent, warm embrace could easily turn carnal. Desire and fear warred in her, and she didn't know how to respond. So many wouldn't even have asked. What was the most confusing was that she wasn't even sure she _wanted_ him to be so chivalrous, so...old-fashioned. To treat her with such deference and care, when only months ago...

“Why are you even _saying_ that?! Like a cruel joke or something?! With what you--?! Well, why don't you just take it?” she snarled.

He turned his face away, looking down to the ground, his skin flushed with something like shame. “Because I want...I want you to understand that what I must have done to you before...that wasn’t me. That was orders, directives given to the Winter Soldier. That wasn’t _me_. And--”

“Well, _fuck you both!_ ” she spat out, cutting him off. She retreated away from the fire, wrapping the parachute tighter around her and finding a niche in the cavern walls to half-hide in. Her heart pounded so strongly in her chest that it was a wonder it didn't echo in the place.

If she hadn’t surrendered her clothing, there was good odds she would have bolted from the cavern and never returned.

Alexei didn’t pursue her. Alexei simply went back to the task of cleaning her clothes with sand, rock, and water, his back turned from her.

She glared at him for a long while, not taking her eyes off of him. She was so very confused now that she was almost certain he was doing it to her on purpose, evaluating her emotional responses on behalf of the Academy and KGB, testing her. Their greatest manipulator clothed as a simple and talented wetworks operative. The paranoia she wove for herself were more comforting to her than the truth, and for hours and hours she clung to them, a spider caught in her own web.


	16. Chapter 16

Natalia woke to something that startled her, and she immediately tensed and threw her back against the wall of the cave, pulling the parachute again over her bare shoulders. The fire was low. Her clothes were now drying on the line of paracord.

There were signs of Alexei’s handiwork about: a half-fashioned pair of crude snow-shoes, like the kind she saw in old black-and-white photographs. But he was no where to be seen, and his clothes and boots were missing. 

Did he leave? Did he _actually_ leave as soon as he was better and didn’t need her to nurse him anymore?

And then the reason for her waking pierced her ears, a bone-chilling and animalistic keen that rose and fell, right outside the cave entrance.

She scrambled for her pistol. Through all of the wet and the grime and the smoke, she wasn’t quite sure its action was to be counted on anymore. Still, the feel of the grip in her palm provided her some feeling of security.

Natalia debated the merits of pausing to actually dress again, and she decided that putting on her jacket and pants and slipping on her running shoes was decent enough protection against the cold conditions outside. At least until she fully assessed the threat.

The yowling again, making the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She chambered a round.

She edged towards the crack that led to the snows and discovered it was night-time, a still and silvery night-time of snow and moonlight.

As she scraped through the entrance, she heard something move at the left. A crunch of snow.

Taking a deep breath, she leapt out into the cold, aiming her weapon.

“Whoa, Natalia! Stand down!” It was Alexei, his hair dark and shining, his features colored in nothing but black and gray and white. He pressed his back up against the stone of the cave-side.

She furrows her brow. “What are you doing out here?” she whispered tightly, as if the beauty of the diamond-flaked slopes before them demanded a quiet courtesy, like one’s presence in a cathedral. Her breath condensed before her into steam.

Natalia was responded to not by Alexei but by a chorus of howls echoing in the ravine and in the landscape below. She whipped her head from him to the source below. But there was nothing to be seen other than the frozen forest, cloaked in white.

“Wolves?! There are _wolves_ here?” she blurted, fixating on him again. His body language was open and unthreatened, so she decided to flip on the safety of her pistol and slip it into her jacket pocket, not taking her eyes off of Alexei. Her heart pounded faster.

“Well, yeah. It’s the Carpathians.” And he tilted his head up, looking to the field of cold stars above him. In the wilderness here, the celestial lights seemed as if you could touch them. He closed his eyes slowly and let out another long and modulated cry to to the pack that was hidden somewhere down below. The line of his body was stretched taught; dangerous and strong and graceful.

The beasts responded again, a wailing and savage symphony.

When Alexei was finished listening, his face became a picture of delight. He turned his head back to her, grinning nearly from ear-to-ear in a way that disarmed her. “It would be even better if there were more,” he stated, boldly at first, and then softening. “A harmony of seven; better than a barbershop quar...”

And he has that _look_ again, as if a shade of a memory brushed just past his fingertips and then evaded him. Still, he did not let it phase him for more than a moment.

“You should try it!” Alexei goaded, putting on what she thought is just a bit of a false enthusiasm to counter the loss.

“What?!” she swallowed.

“C’mon! Give it your best! They’re listening.”

And so she tried to imitate him imitating the beasts, but it came out a little weak, a little too unsure. So he coached her with his own half-muted call, his eyes locked on hers with that seductive intensity. And finally she just let loose like he did, feeling the wordless howling song with every muscle and tendon.

It was crazy, savage, and cathartic. 

In a breath, the wolves responded again, and Natalia felt an incredible thrill race through her. Alexei was laughing with joy, clutching his side. Natalia smiled, chortled too, and gave herself one brief taste of happiness. They were insane; the mountains and the hunger must have finally broken them.

“Not too bad, little pup,” Alexei said warmly after he regained his composure, gazing at her again.

Feeling something powerful and prompting within her, Natalia said to him in Russian, _“The wolf is at the door,”_ then spoke its English translation.

Alexei repeated her Russian phrase with a few mistakes and crude pronunciation.

 _“The wolf is at the door,”_ she said again.

 _”The wolf is at the door,”_ he returned, a bit more clearly.

 _”The wolf is at the door,”_ she prompted, drinking in his words.

This time, his pronunciation and accent was near perfect. She nodded, satisfied.

“You know...” he started, his voice low and deep. He shoved his hands in his pockets, dipping his gaze to her feet. “You know I won’t eat you, Red; not unless you ask me to.”

Natalia felt her knees weaken and another tingling pulse race down her spine and then smolder in her groin. She was suddenly out of control of herself, the confusion returning. So she tried deflecting him.

“This isn’t a fairytale, Alexei,” she pronounced, ready to enter back into the cave and cocoon herself back into the parachute.

“It isn’t?” he countered, gently. “Didn’t I wake up from a spell when you kissed me?”

That was it. Here; under the stars. The uncertainly lifted and cleared. The moment her heart surrendered itself to him, and she could never look back. Despite all the impossibilities ahead. She wanted to be with him in every way that she could. She wanted him to love her in all the ways a man could love a woman.

“ _There is a wolf at the door,_ ” she declared, rushing to him and pressing her body against his. His arms wrapped around her shoulders, embracing her with a measured and restrained ferocity. His lips brushed against the corner of her eye and her temple in the barest, chastest impression of a kiss and nothing more.

“Not just one wolf,” he murmured into her ear, his breath heated and welcome. “Not just one wolf, but two.”


	17. Chapter 17

Her stomach was empty and growled occasionally, but she didn’t mind so much. The weather was warming. The snow would be better packed in the morning, and she’d venture out with snares she now crafted out of a small spool of brass wire that he had kept in his tactical vest. 

“So what other things do you have tucked away that I don’t know about?” she teased him. “'Cause if you got a bubble bath folded up in that, you’ve been holding out.”

Alexei smiled at that as he continued working on the webbing of a snowshoe, using the vast lengths of paracord once attached to the ‘chute. “Right next to the bottle of champagne and a bowl of strawberries and cream.”

“Jerk!” she huffed, now craving fresh fruit.

“Brat,” he countered, easily.

Natalia paused in her work and looked over the small collection of random objects he had withdrawn from his pockets and belt-pouches. A book of matches kept dry in a small sandwich bag, a compass, a small pad of paper and pen. A needle and thread wrapped up in a scrap of drab green canvas. The device that once served as their emergency beacon had been destroyed when the bullet exited from his side, and it was nothing more but plastic and electronic pieces.

“When did you start carrying those things?” she asked him curiously.

“For as long as I can remember,” Alexei said softly, shrugging. “It’s like habit.”

“Instinct?” she prompted.

“Yeah. I guess.” He sighed, closed his eyes and set down his work for a moment. “All I have, all I can recall, is directives. This mission objectives. I can’t remember any other mission before this one.” He then steeled himself and continued tying knots.

Natalia felt a rush of sympathy for him. He so much wanted to remember, while she was always trying to forget.

“It’s called amnesia, Alexei. Do you remember where you learned to fly a helicopter?”

Alexei shook his head, a few locks of hair obscuring his eyes. “No.”

“You’re American, you know. At least I’m pretty sure you were.”

He inhaled a hissing, hitching breath. “That’s enough, Natalia. I can’t remember, and this doesn’t help a lot. It just hurts. I don’t think you can see it, but when you try to draw me down that path, it’s like sharp needles, shrapnel right behind my eyes.”

She suddenly felt remorseful, that her obsessive curiosity had gotten the better of her caring. “Fuck. I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again, interrogate you like that.”

Alexei bit his lips, then gazed at her with that smoldering underlook that came to him naturally. “You’re really good at it, you know?”

It was her turn to shrug, finishing up the construction of the last of her snares. “It’s what they recruited me for, I think.” She ran her hand through her dirty and knotting hair, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “Hey, one last question before bed…? It’s about now, not then.”

“Shoot.”

“How come we haven’t kissed again? Like really kissed. I want to, and it seems you...well. The way you look at me.” She was unused to being so open like this, with her desires; with her _real_ desires. Still it felt needed. They had to banish the dark.

Alexei set a finished snowshoe aside and reached for the other frame. “It’s because once we start, I don’t think I can stop. I’m sorry; this is going to get very crude, but I saw you in that alley in Belgrade, on your knees with that man...so...” Not meeting her eyes seemed to help him. “I have a greed inside of me... And whatever girls may have been tossed to the Winter Soldier didn't meet it. When it happens, _if_ it happens, it won’t be considerate or kind. And we can’t afford that in this place, right now, in the straights we are in.”

Both fire and ice raced through her blood as he explained, and Natalia did her best to keep composed. “So you followed me? In Belgrade? And I wasn’t informed? I didn't even know?”

“Yes,” Alexei confessed. “Your safety is high on the objectives list. First, secure Stambolic and deliver him to the black ops JSO team at the designated time and place. Second, assure your survival and delivery back to the Academy handlers; self-sacrifice authorized for first and second objectives.”

Natalia didn't know what to feel at that point, but her eyes stung. “So all the things that you did. The helicopter. The snow...”

Alexei’s voice was unsteady for once. “I’m not the knight in shining armor; I’m sure I've never been that dumb or that good or that golden. The Asset was given orders; the Asset still has orders. But I’d like to think that whatever man I am, I would have done it anyway. Because brothers-in-arms don’t abandon each other.” The next words he said seemed both ultimately precious and supremely painful to him. “They see each other through, till the end of the line.”

She had a thousand responses to choose from, to hook him with. A thousand threads of his past to test. But she chose the one that didn't drive her from his affection and didn't put more veils of lies and unspoken truths between them. “A knight in shining armor would not want me for long, learning what I am. But another hunter? Another killer? He, he could understand me.”

He smiled lopsidedly and held out his arms in invitation. She took him up on it, and settled herself into his lap, straddling him with her trained acrobat's legs. His hands, both the cool metallic one and the fleshy one were then stroking her cheekbones. In perfect Russian, he pronounced, _“There is a wolf at the door.”_

And she responded in a longing whisper, _“Not just one wolf, but two.”_


	18. Chapter 18

Natalia could hardly believe how much more comfortable it was sleeping beside Alexei than alone. With the small stripped sections of green pine needles left over from crafting the snowshoes, they used the parachute to create a small mattress for them both.

While his bionic arm was almost always cool, the rest of him radiated heat, and cradled between him and the fire, she was the warmest she had been since they fell out of the helicopter. Occasionally he would reach over her to tend the fire.

There was a time he reached over her to keep the fire fed and he took a long and deep shuddering sigh.

“What is it?” she asked, turning towards him to look in his eyes.

A smile passed his lips before his frown. “I have directives in my head. Still. They want the Asset to return and report. They want the Asset calling the shots again.”

“What can I do?” she said, pretty sure she couldn’t do anything.

“Could you sing?” Alexei asked this as if he was a little embarrassed for asking something so fanciful, so unmanly. “I thought once, when you were changing my bandage, I heard you sing.”

She swallowed. Her voice was never what they called pretty. She wasn’t a soprano, able to trill out high melodies. In opera, singing voices of her kind were assigned to the villainesses and the matrons. But she didn’t think he cared, and it was at least _something_ she could do to demonstrate her caring.

So she gathered him back into her arms, guided him to rest his head for a little while on her chest. She tentatively let her fingertips brush through his hair occasionally as she cracked open her lips with whatever came into her mind. A lot of it was melancholy, a lot of it was Russian folk songs.

Eventually, her lips ran dry. Eventually his breathing came slow and steady in the signs of true sleep. She eased away from him to throw a few more dried branches on their ever-burning fire.

In the very early morning, they ate the pine-chips she had scavenged the day before, washing it down with more pine-needle tea.

Natalia helped him with his wound, which was almost unnecessary at this point. He healed preternaturally fast. There was no sign of infection; his skin was knitting together. It was only his previous words, that he was tortured every time she tried to probe into the past or what he was, that stopped her from trying to resolve that mystery.

Alexei helped her strap on the snowshoes he had crafted for her. “One really good kill, and we are out of here. Back to hot showers and three-square. It’s pressure, Natalia. But you’re prepared and smart and resourceful and vicious. You'll do this. We’ll survive.” 

He lent her his goggles again and his knife. She also holstered her pistol.

Natalia took a little time to get used to the snowshoes. It was a bit awkward walking in them, but it was much less tiring than wading through the deep snow, or punching through it again and again up to her knees.

She descended down into the pine forest and started observing the patterns of tracks that Alexei had described to her. She set the snares at rabbit-neck height at good junctions, sticking extra twigs in the snow to funnel them towards the trap.

Then she heard nature’s squabble. It sounded like a bunch of crows or ravens, not too far off, making an agitated ruckus. She tuned into the noise and trudged through the forest to its source. She placed her feet along so many other animal tracks.

Natalia paused about thirty meters out. Four or five wolves were feasting on a fresh corpse, which looked to be some sort of mangled deer. Ravens and a fox stalked the edges of the gory site. A few of them raised their heads at her approach, their jaws darkened with the beast’s blood. 

Her heart raced as she drew her pistol. The largest of the multi-colored and sized pack was a muscled brute with an orange-red coat; he turned from the kill to meet her eyes with a fierce challenge.

Natalia swallowed, her thumb flicking off the safety of her weapon. She thought about the value of the creature’s pelt, his meat. She remembered Alexei’s joy at singing with them, and yet she knew his practical ruthlessness. Sentimentality did not often run with survival. He was depending on her.

She aimed and pulled the trigger. The bullet fired, the sound ricocheting off of the mountain stone. Her pulse beat once, twice, and thrice.

Natalia lowered her gun from where she had raised it towards the sun, and she saw as the wolves and every other beast around her scattered in alarm into the forest at the sharp crack.

Her window was short. She approached the slaughter site with his knife drawn and ready. There was a largely intact haunch on the deer-like corpse, and she worked on that first, her body fueled by adrenaline. She slashed tendons and used her weight to yank and separate the limb from its hip.

The wolves were gathering again, eager and hungry. The ravens were circling, madly squawking. She fired once more into the air and they yipped and cawed and backed off long enough for her to use her improvised head covering to bundle a few internal organs in the silk. Her gloves were soaked in blood and entrails and animal hair.

Natalia tugged her prizes away in one hand, her pistol still in the other, wary of being followed and attacked. The coldness of her breath stung in her lungs as she slogged back to camp as quickly as she could.

Alexei was there to meet her a few hundred meters from the cave entrance without any snowshoes. His face was awash in worry. He just about fell down the snow-laden slope to hug her. She dropped the hind leg she dragged and the bundle of bleeding meat.

“I heard the shots. Are you alright?”

Natalia nodded into him. “I think so. The wolves...they killed something, and I stole from them. I couldn’t...I didn’t want...they were so beautiful. I’m so fucking stupid, to put myself between them and their prey.” 

Alexei hushed her. “Shh, shh.” He must have looked at her prize dropped on the snow at their feet. “You did well, Natalia. This is exactly what we need.”

She forced herself to take a deep breath. “I couldn’t kill them. The alpha was red and big. Even if I had tried to shoot him...”’

“Oh,” Alexei comforted. “He’s probably just a big dummy-dumb lout with more bluster than meanness in him. I don’t think he’d given you a chase anyway; there's not enough flesh on you. You weren’t hurt, you still have rounds, and this is fresh meat. This is really good. You concentrate on getting clean. I’ll worry about cooking and prepping it all. Fair deal?”

Natalia made a half-step back and could see the pride and assurance in his eyes. She _had_ done well. If only they were somewhere safer...

“Sure. But you owe me a bubble bath,” she teased, shoeing the rest of the way to their shelter.


	19. Chapter 19

Natalia was absolutely slavering at the idea of the meat roasting over their fire, even as Alexei was still skinning and slaughtering the haunch.

She took one of the water tins and walked towards the back of the cave to completely strip down, even her sports bra and panties. Though it was chilly, having her skin breathe felt good. She rinsed out her underwear and scrubbed herself down with a square of parachute. What she wouldn’t give for a sliver of soap.

While they and her jacket dried, she put back on her tanktop and pants, rejoining him. Alexei had skewered the meat on stripped lengths of green pine, propping them up over the flames. The sizzling and smell were almost too much to bear; she wanted to eat it all half-raw.

Natalia sat down beside him on their crude mattress, her eyes unable to look away from her cooking lunch. Her stomach roiled in anticipation. “What’s today’s plan, then?”

Alexei used his metal fingers to rotate one of the skewers. “We cook up all the meat and get more of the pine-bark, too. I’ll test out my snowshoes, make adjustments. You have snow-goggles to make. I have to figure out a cover for one of the water cans. Then we’ll have a really, really good sleep, and at first light we head off the mountains and down to lower elevations.”

“And back to civilization,” she observed, rather glumly. “Back to the handlers. Debrief. Await the next assignment.”

Alexei nodded, frowning. “We can’t stay here. The Asset won’t let us. And if you run away, he’ll come after you.”

She swallowed. “I know,” she breathed, angry and sad all at once. The reality of their predicament was becoming horribly clear. She wished he could disobey his orders. She’d run away with him anywhere, they could be anything.

Alexei reached out and tested one of the skewers with his metallic thumb and finger. “This one’s about ready,” he remarked. “You drooling yet? I sure am. It’s best to cook it all the way through, just in case.”

“What does it feel like? You arm?” She wasn’t sure that it was best to ask, but she needed something really important to keep her mind off of the food until it was ready.

He was silent for a bit, and she was about to apologize when he spoke.

“It’s heavy,” Alexei responded slowly, softly; he wrapped both his arms around his legs. “Hot and cold are no different to it, but its pretty good -- actually _really good_ \-- at reading pressure and responding as I need. Most of the time it feels like mine; my instrument, like my knife or my rifle, and I’m thankful for its strength and use rather than...than a stump. But sometimes it feels like a parasite, something that’s attached itself to me, draining me of choice because it wields me rather than me wielding it. And the red star? That’s like a brand, a _cattle_ brand, and I think I hate it.”

Her vision blurred, and Natalia realized that she was on the edge of tears. She had no words for him. She could not imagine his predicament even with her being really good at imagining and getting into other people’s heads.

Alexei uncoiled himself, reaching for a skewer and pulling it away from the flames and blowing on the well-done meat. “I think lunch is just about served.”

Her stomach suddenly made her swipe for the whole skewer, but Alexei was quicker, pulling it back and out of her grasp. She was suddenly panicked, thinking he wouldn’t share until he was full, wondering if she would starve in the meantime. He was the alpha, and she had to wait her turn. Natalia bit her lips and slumped back down.

“Natalia,” he soothed, as if he saw something in her features that concerned him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to snatch it away. I meant to tell you that you had to start slowly, because it’s rich and your stomach is so empty. Here.”

In that steel grasp he held up to her a torn off piece of the cooked animal, a good bite-full. “You first. Go ahead.”

Natalia closed her eyes and with lightning-speed, both of her hands tightened in a death-grip around his wrist; she then quickly rose to her knees to consume the morsel savagely. Her teeth eventually found resistance in his metallic fingertips. She sat back languidly, still chewing through the tough meat that was suddenly the most wonderful thing she had ever tasted.

She knew how it must have seemed to Alexei, and she dared to look at his face for signs of his intentions. His chest rose and fell in rapid breath. There was a hunger in his dilated eyes not meant for food. She had cravings, too. It had seemed mostly a harmless flirtation, to eat from his hand like she did; now she wasn't so sure.

What he saw next in her own face was then a puzzle to her. He scoffed, turned his head away from her and thrust the all but one piece of the skewer towards her. His shoulders squared. “Eat,” he commanded, like and unlike the Asset. “Eat carefully.”

Alexei began focusing on what he had taken from the first skewer, and tended to the rest in silence.

Eventually both their bellies were full. She felt almost drunken and ready to nap. She had already curled up with her parachute-pack turned pillow.

“When are we going to fuck already?!” she blurted to his back.

Alexei just sighed.

“Well? I’d like to know,” she emphasized. “‘Cause now it just feels like you’re just--”

“When I’m less like an animal, and more like a person?!” was his frustrated response.

“Fine,” she responded. "Okay."

Annoyed and charmed, Natalia tossed her back to his, contemplated all sorts of things. If she used just a little more of her technique, she could most certainly break him down and have his beast unleashed upon her at last.

Natalia felt her own hand slide along the skin of her hip to slip underneath the waistband of her pants. She contemplated releasing herself then, quietly, with just a few rustlings and shivers and muffled gasps into the dark of the cave. He was most certainly an American, and Americans were typically puritanical about self-pleasuring. The minute he realized what she was doing, he’d likely bolt towards the outside, making an excuse about gathering pine-bark. Maybe he'd brave the cold and find a quiet place to take his own edge off.

But she couldn’t do it and withdrew her hand to clench at the pack. Perhaps it was that old competitiveness with the Asset. Perhaps she just wanted to prove to herself she actually cared for him more than an electric lay or two.

Still, it was only a matter of minutes before Alexei rose and walked away. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. We’ll regroup then.”

“Roger that,” she murmured, forcing herself to breathe deeply and catch a little shut-eye.


	20. Chapter 20

Natalia was a bit saddened to leave their mountain cave that morning, for all of its dirt and smoke. It was the reason that both Alexei and she were alive. Perhaps just as important, it had taken a weapon and made him back into a man.

They doused the fire, wrapped up the remains of the parachute, packed up the cooked meat into a ration tin. When she collected the snares, one of them had caught a hare. It was half-frozen when she freed it from its noose, and Alexei pronounced they would simply lash it to the outside of her pack and clean it later.

Snowshoed and equipped, Alexei consulted his compass again and then tucked it away. “There is no really magic to this; it’s just about going to lower elevation, following a stream or catching a road. Keep the pace steady. There is no reason to work up a sweat, and if the temp dips tonight and we’re caught out, you’ll be glad you’re dry.”

Natalia nodded, shifting the pack again. “Then let’s get going.”

Alexei glanced back over his shoulder at the cave, and she thought she saw a flicker of deep loss cross his eyes before he turned and started walking out of the ravine. She followed in his footprints.

As they descended, the snow became more compact and a little easier to walk on. About every half hour, he paused them to rest, take a drink of water, and eat a bit of roasted pine-chips or a hunk of meat.

Every few hours, she’d drop her pack and shimmy up a tree and get a better sense of the terrain.

It was the mid-afternoon when she unlaced her snowshoes and removed her pack and vaulted up into the next tree, when she was amazed at her own view.

“There’s a valley! And a road; and a couple of houses!” she called down to Alexei. “Maybe about three or four kilometers off?”

Her gaze lingered on the cherry red roofs of several dwellings that looked inviting.

“What bearing?” he inquired.

“About ten o’clock to me. Compass bearing, you mean?” She consulted his orienteering tool laced around her neck, twisting the needle’s housing around like he had taught her until the red floating pointer aligned with “N” again. “140 magnetic. 143?” 

“Good enough, rookie!” he called up. “It’s only a mile or two.” She then descended down the boughs to join him again. He took his compass back and used her measurements to calibrate a direction.

“That way?” he confirmed when she landed, pointing to slightly to his left.

She looked up to the angle of the sun and nodded, crouching to lace back on her snowshoes. “Yes. Pretty sure.”

He smiled at her, one of those gleaming and fond smiles, and Natalia smiled back.

They were on the edge of the wood-line in less than an hour. The valley was idyllic, sheep pastures carved out of the forest to either side of the road. There was a charming two-story modernized wooden cottage next to a brook, surrounded by disused wooden livestock fences. At lower elevation, it was a few degrees warmer, and the snow was easily compacting and melting.

They began their reconnaissance, even though Natalia wanted little more but to break in and enjoy things like plumbing and furniture again with all immediacy and longing.

“The storm caught people by surprise,” Alexei cautioned. “But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful. The helicopter crashes may or may not have gotten out in the Romanian press.”

So she and he set up a little fireless camp a few hundred meters deep into the woods to wait until nightfall, like the disciplined agents they were. There was no sound of motor-engines and the single-lane road was devoid of vehicle tracks. The cottage and the other house down the road seemed unoccupied. Still, it was a good re-entry into a world where every situation and location had to be assessed for threats.

“The closest is probably a holiday rental,” she conjectured. “And if there were guests, they cancelled the reservations.”

Alexei braced his back against a hardwood tree as he sat down on the still-green branches he cut to pad them from the damp snow. He held out his hand. “Will you sit with me?” And she did, pressing his back against her own, feeling the warmth and comfort of his arms lightly wrap around her.

As they waited the hours, Natalia tutored him again in his Russian. He learned quickly, especially when she decided to teach him colorful curse words and cheesy pickup lines. He laughed at some of them, shaking his head. “No dame would fall for _that_ one! Not even from me,” he stated.

Alexei had such odd turns of phrase sometimes.

“So what do you think you’d want first, if we broke in? Real food? Real sleep? A real bath?” he prompted.

Natalia responded with a saying she had heard from somewhere. “‘Food can replace sleep. A shower can replace sleep. But neither food nor sleep can replace a shower.’”

He chuckled into her shoulder. “True.”

They sat for a while in companionable quiet, listening and looking for signs of activity in the valley. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Alexei uttered huskily. “Natalia, keep your hands on your knees.”

“What?” She shifted a little; by his tone she suspected what was coming.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered softly. “Don’t move.” His lips dragged briefly on the edge of her ear, and she suddenly felt electrified. “I want to see how much control _you_ have. Are you up for it?”

She nodded a few times, letting her lids fall. “This is payback, isn’t it?”

“A little bit, yeah. Also, I want the chance to give you something…something gentle.”

Natalia could have dwelt on dark ironies, but she just murmured. “Alright, _Alyosha_ , do your worst.”

His worst was very, very good. His fingertips were like feathers on her jaw and cheek. His lips could be silken or firm on her ears and brow; his teeth scraping or biting on her neck and throat. She must have tasted like salt and smoke. In the early part of his attentions, when she could still piece together a coherent thought or two, Natalia wondered if he had, in truth, been trained as she had. There was a term the KGB used for an agent like that: _raven_. 

Then she couldn’t be anything at all but a stringed instrument of nerves. She became drowned in her own pleasure, all without him going any further south than her collarbone and her keeping her hands away from herself. But the biology of that didn’t really matter when it felt this ecstatically exquisite. All that, and he hadn't even properly kissed her. When he eased his affections and time returned to her, she was looking straight up at the forest-dappled sky, hinting at sunset, her head tilted back on his shoulder. 

"That was amazing. I never..." she declared.

She was tempted to press her hips and rear closer against him, just to feel for the telltale sign of his own arousal. But that wasn’t in the steps of this particular dance he had lead, so she simply focused on her breath and regaining dominion of her arms and legs so they could prepare to slip themselves once more into civilization.

She incanted, like a prayer. _“There is a wolf at the door.”_

And in the call-and-response, he returned: _“Not just one wolf, but two.”_


	21. Chapter 21

It was the dark just after dusk. When they witnessed no lights illuminating windows in the log-and-stone constructed cottage and the house down the road, Natalia and Alexei decided to make their move.

She went ahead of him, devoid of her snowshoes now that the warming temperatures melted and compacted the snow. She was thankful for the moon’s illumination, thankful that there didn’t seem to be any dogs sounding the alarm. They had agreed that they would continue as apparitions; taking shelter, a bit of food, but leaving no trace until they could affect their extraction. A dead pet or a dead country-dweller was not what either of them wanted, not with the helicopter crashes in the area likely drawing the attentions of the authorities.

The cottage had one ground-level doorway from the outside terrace, and multiple windows. Still, before she tried the latch, Natalia listened for occupancy for a steady minute. Nothing. Unfortunately, the door was locked, and she didn’t have an easy way to pick it. So she tried windows; again, bolted.

Then she looked up at the number of second-story balconies ringing the cabin, and decided to try her luck there. The log construction made it incredibly easy for her to vault up and over the railing. This time the balcony’s glass door did not bar her entry, and she sighed with relief.

Natalia drew her pistol and began quickly clearing the rooms, turning on a light here and there to aid her. The bedroom she had entered through was decorated with rustic charm; attached was a bathroom with a decent-sized shower.

When she caught herself in a mirror she hardly recognized herself. Her hair knotted and greasy, her face a bit sunburnt from the snow-glare. Even her eyes seemed changed somehow. A bit more feral, certainly.

The temperature in the cottage was not much different from the outside, another indication that it no one had stayed here recently.

She then used the stairs to descend to the cottage’s first floor, making note of the large and old-fashioned tile stove that was used to heat the building and probably the water too.

Natalia then found the switch to the outside lighting, and per their arrangement, she turned it on, waited three seconds, and then off again. She unlocked the door from the inside, then holstered her gun.

As she waited for Alexei, she glided her hands over every surface she could reach. The kitschy dining room table, painted green to match a sideboard. The cloth lampshade overhead. The weaving of a wicker chair. Even in the dim light, every object glowed to her mind as a connection, a thread, back to humanity.

He entered quietly, carrying all their gear and the gutted rabbit he had field-dressed earlier. “I checked out the garage,” he said. “Empty.”

And then the wonder of the cottage interior caught his attention too. As he spun slowly, his gaze seeming to drink in all the details. “This is swank, Natalia,” he uttered, the edges of his lips curving up in a smile.

And then his grin faded suddenly, and the parachute pack slipped from his shoulder and the bundled hare dropped from his fist. In the next instant, he twitched and pressed his metal palm against his eye socket, making a near-silent gasp.

A taste of horror rose in her throat, and Natalia didn’t need to ask what it was. The Asset.

“Where is the phone?” he hissed painfully.

“There is no phone, Alexei.” Natalia responded, as evenly as she could, daring to approach him, lay a hand on his back in assurance. “It’s a holiday cottage in the mountains; we’re lucky it has power. There is no phone, I’ve checked.”

His chest rose and fell for another moment, and then he seemed better, letting his hand fall; but his eyes still seemed a bit nervous.

“Why isn’t it warmer in here?” he asked.

“No one’s started the fire in the stove.” She pointed to the large, white-and-red tiled monstrosity with a basket filled with split hard-wood beside it. “It takes a few hours to warm up, but when it does, it heats the whole place for a long time. It’ll heat our water, too.”

He then quickly stalked to it, opened the door of the stove, and crouched to begin building a fire in it with the dry wood and kindling and a little scrap newspaper.

“Alexei…there will be some smoke out of the chimney,” she warned, as it seems that she was the only one thinking particularly clearly at the moment. “People may smell it, see it. It may give us away.”

“I don’t care this time, Natalia,” he choked, his voice tinged with unhappiness. “I just want to be _human_ again; _live_ like one. Just for a night.” It was heartbreaking to her, to see him cling desperately to himself, the man she had awoken with a kiss. 

“Okay,” she soothed, joining him by the stove. “Me too. Me too.” She then figured out how the flue opened before he struck a match and started the blaze. He closed the soot-stained door and just sat beside it, staring at the flames blooming inside.

“Alexei,” she knelt beside him. “Hey, _Alyosha._ Please look at me.”

He turned his gaze to her, his eyes dark and shining and fearful. 

“Would you help me go through all the drawers and cabinets and closets?” she inquired. “Often times guests leave things, or the host provides little amenities, just in case they forgot to pack their toothbrush.” Her talking seemed to steady him, bring him back from his harrowing thoughts, so she continued. “And then, after we do that, we can have rabbit and rice for dinner. I am a decent cook, for what I do, and I saw spices and basics under the kitchen counter. We can pretend we are on holiday...or…” Dare she? ”...on honeymoon.”

Her last word caused him to suddenly chuckle. His mood shifted almost instantly, and again he was that confident rake. “Well, if you put it that way.” He began rising to his feet, extending a hand to lift her up too. “But a shower has to be in there really soon, preferably before dinner.”

“If you don’t mind it luke-warm,” she countered.

“I think I’ll manage with anything that is not out of a rusty can.”

Suddenly, a shower made it to the top of Natalia’s agenda, too. “There are two, you know? One upstairs and one down here.” She let the unspoken question hang as silence, lifting her brow and gauging his intentions.

“You go ahead and take the one up top,” he said, a bit to her disappointment. “But if you find a razor up there, bring it down. I’d kill for a razor right now.” And he would; he was so very capable of that.

She nodded, “Noted.” Then she turned from him and set her feet towards the staircase.

“And Natalia?” he called to her back.

“Yes?” she asked, pausing.

“The night’s not over,” he voiced lasciviously. “Not by a long shot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cottage in this story is loosely based off of a real Romanian holiday cabin in the mountains:  
> http://www.holiday-romania.net/holiday-lodge-romania/home/at-a-glance.html


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [This one is for Bedb, who has been so very patient. ;-) ]

They both showered like disciplined soldiers, knowing that the warming water in the stove’s tank was not endless. In the upstairs bathroom, Natalia first wetted her body with tepid water for only half a minute, and then shut it off to lather every inch of her body except for her face and hair. Soap. _Real_ , sweet-smelling soap. The washcloth was a bit rough, but it too was marvelous on her skin in its own way, scrubbing off soil and soot and traces of dried sweat. 

She then rinsed, feeling the rising heat of the water as it circulated through the pipes and up to her.

The most difficult task would be her hair, and she saved that for last. In a basket by the sink she had found a comb. She wished for real shampoo and conditioner, wondered if there were some down in Alexei’s shower, but decided she would make due.

Several years ago, the Academy had, in efforts to craft her body into an idealized sexual form, removed her ability to grow hair on her legs and under her arms. That was the least of what the Academy did to her. As her fingers and comb worked to tease out the tangles in her hair, she recalled this afternoon’s earlier conversation, as she and he were making it down from the mountains.

“So you _can’t_ have kids?” he had asked, his tone holding both a little amazement and discomfort.

“Not accidentally. I don’t even bleed each month, but I think I still have all the plumbing.” She tried to be nonchalant about it. “I mean, I suppose with a test-tube and some sort of reverse procedure--”

“Nope!” he threw up a fist, the silent signal for _stop_. “I’ve heard enough!”

Natalia had shaken her head, stifling a smile. He was such a stereotypical guy sometimes.

One particular knot at the nape of her neck was stubborn, so Natalia gritted her teeth and just yanked it, ripping a bundle of hair out. Finally, finally she had tamed her coif. She turned on the water one last time to scrub and rinse her hair and her face, and discovered it was actually nearing to something hot; because it just felt so damn good, she indulged herself for just a minute longer before stepping out of the shower and drying herself.

The air in the cottage was still cool, so Natalia decided to slip into the double bed naked while her hair dried a bit. The soft, clean sheets were silken against her polished skin, and she swam in them for a few moments, closing her eyes, enjoying the sensation, and giggling.

“You’re very strange sometimes, Natalia,” came Alexei’s voice, just at the foot of the bed.

She gasped, sitting up, and clenched the sheet protectively to her in instinct.

Alexei stood there with a towel tucked around his waist, a gray wooly bundle held in his birth-given hand. “I’m sorry. I’m just not good at remembering to knock anymore.” His face was clean-shaven, his damp hair combed back. His wound was little more than a silvery pucker, due to fade. “I found this sweater that I think you can wear like a dress. It’s softer than it looks.”

Natalia watched as his gaze drank her in, her own breath quickening. Surely this would be the moment that he would pounce upon her and slake his thirst.

But then his face and eyes became unreadable. “Here,” he offered, setting it down on sofa opposite the bed. “I’ll get dressed and start working on the rabbit.”

He slipped out just the way he came in, like a ghost.

In a few racing heartbeats, Natalia made a decision. She arose quickly, tugging the sheet off the bed with her, and pursued him with all speed she could manage. At the base of the stairs she caught his wrist, but he had still yet to turn.

“Never again,” she blurted, the passion in her words surprising her.

Alexei spun her around and pinned her against a rough wooden wall so hard and so fast her wind was knocked out of her and she saw stars. But she clung to him even as he tore the bed-sheet from her naked body. Their mouths ground together in something that less resembled a kiss and more resembled a devouring.

As her breath returned, she raked her nails fiercely across his skin with one hand and fisted a handful of his hair in the other, uncaring whether she left marks.

He ripped his towel from his own waist. She didn’t so much see his erection as felt it, the length of the stiff shaft and head pressed against her abdomen. He bucked once, lifting her even further off her feet, clasped and steadied her thigh with his metallic hand. 

With no warning, he impaled her to the hilt.

She cried out at the shock to her flesh, tearing her lips from his. It hurt, but this time Natalia craved it, was wet for it. His strokes were savage, but she relished each one with a dark delight that set her belly and thighs on fire. She arched against him, grasped at the sculpted muscles of his back, felt the cold and unyielding contrast of his constructed shoulder.

Alexei panted into her hair raggedly, straining and shuddering with each deep thrust. When the orgasm arrived, he screwed his eyes shut and his teeth bit her hard where her neck met her shoulder, unwilling to shout. With one final stroke, he spilled himself into her. It racked his whole body, made him quake and roil for several moments, made him snatch back feral sounds from his throat.

Eventually, he loosened his hold, withdrew from her, and let her slide down to where her tiptoes could touch the floor again. He pressed his forehead against hers, taking in a quivering and deep breath. His eyes then met hers: beautiful, liquid, ebony pools ringed by shadow-blue seas; they were the most tranquil she had ever seen. She stared back, enthralled and wordless.

Quickly, with all his grace and strength, Alexei scooped her up into his arms and carried her further into the large common room abutting the small kitchen.

“What are you…?” She finally managed to ask.

Alexei just snatched a pillow from one of the couches. As he lowered her down to the rugged floor by the great tile stove, he slid the cushion underneath her bare buttocks.

“We aren’t finished yet,” he stated. “Lay back.”

So she did. Alexei lowered himself between her knees, and both his hands traced her flesh from her neck downward, pausing briefly over the curve of her breasts, the angle of her hipbones. His hands then pressed open her thighs further.

Was he going to take her again? Did his cock stir itself that quickly?

But then Alexei crouched and drew back. His face hovered over her mound, the heat from his breath catching in the the neat and tight curls there. 

Natalia just blinked, uncomprehending until he dipped his lips into her throbbing folds. He started slowly with his attentions, but she was already highly, strangely aroused with the notion that he was tasting their juices mingled together.

She moaned and her fingers laced through the hair at the back of his head. She rolled her hips and pressed his mouth even harder into her, unmindful of his teeth. His steeled hand dragged again over her body, and she found herself biting into the fleshy part of her own palm as the euphoria built itself quickly to a peak.

Alexei paused, just briefly, to throatily order, “Don’t scream, Natalia.”

And then a few moments later, just when she was about go over the edge, the cool fingers clamped down hard on the tiny bud of her nipple, harder than she thought possible other than by some instrument of sexual torture. It took everything she had not to shriek as her body convulsed and twisted underneath him, the spice of pain just whipping her deeper into the throes of her own rapture. 

As she fought herself from greying out, he heard Alexei’s low growl in her ear: “When I said I wouldn’t eat you unless you asked? Well, sometimes I _am_ just an animal.”


	23. Chapter 23

They had another quick shower. In the bathroom mirror, Natalia took an inventory of her body, from head to toe. His bite on her shoulder was a round bruise, but not so distinct that it couldn’t be mistaken for another type of injury, especially when she still had scrapes and other bruises from the ordeal of the past few days. Her nipple still throbbed and was exceptionally tender, but intact. Her groin felt gratifying used.

Alexei’s back bore none of the scratches she had inflicted. He healed that fast. She wondered how his fresh shave would come across, or if the Asset’s handlers even paid attention to that.

There was a small clothes washer in the cottage. While she could wear the sweater he had found, he resorted to going commando in his black cargo pants.

Natalia attended to preparing their late-night supper while Alexei sat at the cottage dining room table, dismantling and cleaning her pistol with an extra toothbrush once left for guests. It seemed like a ritual to him, familiar and calming.

There were spheres of knowledge and skill he seemed to have mastered somewhere in his mysterious past. Wetworks operative. Survivalist. Pilot. Yet she witnessed vast holes in his experience; when they sat down to eat, with plates and silverware and glasses, he was awkward and tentative with his knife and fork, as if they were habits he had not visited in a long, long, long time.

Alexei had found a radio/CD player in the common room, and tuned to find weather information. Natalia translated for him. Even in the high Carpathians, temperatures were warming back to seasonal levels. The snow would continue to melt and clear. This was their last night in isolation.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Natalia asked as they consumed seasoned rabbit, rice, and peas.

Alexei shrugged and did not meet her eyes. He seemed reluctant yet restless. “Investigate the house down the road. If we find a phone or a way to transmit our location to them, then we must.” He didn’t need to elaborate on how the Asset would take over, complete the mission. Return to base. Report.

Natalia toyed with the last of her meal. A beast was conditioned, true. _But a robot was programmed._ A seed took root then, even the thought barely touched her inner dialogues.

“And then…?” she inquired.

“You take lead. I can’t…” His own fork clattered on his plate. “I can’t trust myself.”

Natalia reached over the table, grasped her left hand in his right, warmth upon warmth. “Alexei, will you look at me?”

And he did. His eyes seemed always quick to hold a maelstrom.

“Do you think you could pretend to be the Asset? Be what your handlers’ expect, but you’re the one in the driver’s seat? As long as we played nice with him and his orders?” Natalia brushed her thumb over his knuckles.

Alexei shook his head slowly. “I don’t know…” he whispered painfully.

“Think about it, _Alyosha,_ ” she offered, summoning confidence in her voice. “The only orders concerning me to this point were to assure my survival, right? Which you both have accomplished. They didn’t tell you not to touch me, right? Not to-- “ _Love_ was on her lips, but she bit it back, nearly drawing blood from her own tongue. “Not to have supper with me?”

“Right. Yes,” he agreed, his eyes narrowing.

“Alright, then.” She soothed. “So you tell them how things went, from the Asset’s frame-of-mind, of mission reports and objectives, _and only that._ I’ll fill in some areas, because they are used to more nuance from me.”

Natalia took a deep and quavering breath, feeling herself breaking. “My Academy weeds out any devotion other than to itself, its own objectives. I’ve seen it before. What we are doing is forbidden. We can’t let on...”

She bowed her head, feeling wave of loss upon loss, despite her attempt at a fearless demeanor. She then heard Alexei rise from his seat, kneeling and wrapping one arm around her shoulders. She twisted and leaned into him, burying her face in the dark curtains of his hair.

“Remember, Natalia. We are the deadly ones, the clever ones, the brave ones. We’ll work this out,” he tried to encourage. She could tell when his cock-sure demeanor was a smokescreen for his own fears, and this was one of those times. 

Still, she carried on the illusion. _”There is a wolf at the door,”_ she murmured into his ear, her hands sliding up his arms, over his shoulders, up his neck to rest her warm hands there. This time, she said it with all the emotion and intention of someone confessing they were falling in love.

 _”Not just one wolf, but two,”_ he returned with the same intensity.

They coupled a few more times that night, and Alexei was more merciful with her than their first encounter. She had the chance to practice some of her talents with him, spurring him into further lusts or leaving him spent and fatigued. And he gave as much as he got, skilled in ways that was yet another mystery to her.

The only thing Alexei reacted negatively to, violently to, was light restraint. Natalia took an errant silky scarf she discovered to bind his wrists to a headboard on the bed, so she could use her mouth on him while he was kept from touching her. The knot was half tied around his birth-given wrist when he suddenly jolted, pushed her hard with the preternatural strength of his metal arm. She flew off the bed, impacted a wall. The surprise of it dazed her for a moment, but she shook it off.

When she picked herself up, he was sitting up, all the desire in his body language turned to that of panic and desperation, like he was about ready to flee the room or attack her.

She swallowed, upset and remorseful. “I’m sorry, Alexei,” she calmed. “I won’t try to restrict you like that ever again.”

He met her eyes, tensed and released his jaw, and said hoarsely. “I don’t know where that came from. Are you hurt?”

Natalia shook her head, sitting on the edge of the bed. “No. Not really. Do you still want to do this? We could just go to sleep.”

There was a long silence that hung in the space between them. Alexei then offered a brief twitch of a smile through the dissipating tension in his features. “I don’t know when we’ll get the chance ever again, so yeah, let’s continue. Just...let me take lead for a while.”

“Sounds delightful,” she crooned.

They finally did sleep, finding the firmest mattress they could in the whole cottage. Once, Alexei cried out in his slumber with some unintelligible words. Before Natalia decided whether it was best to wake him, he became still again, his breathing almost imperceptible, as if he was a statue or frozen.

Natalia dreaded the dawn.


	24. Chapter 24

It was Natalia that called in, having the number and the script drilled into her weeks before the op. In Russian, she spoke into the cordless phone: “Yes. I need to order two replacement HEPA filters for my Electrolux Euro 9100 … Part number A-32557-001. Name? Nadine Regnier.”

Her eyes flashed up to Alexei, and he stood with his back to her, watching the entranceways. She gave the voice on the line the address of the house they had just broken into, just a half click away from the cottage.

“One to two days delivery? ... Ground? Excellent. Yes, please leave the package in back.”

Natalia hung up, her shoulders slumping. “A vehicle will be here to extract us in a few hours. We should leave. The snow’s melted enough; the family could be home at any minute.”

“Roger,” Alexei acknowledged, tersely. Perhaps the Asset was influencing him already; perhaps he was just adjusting to the role. 

She approached him and found that his gaze had settled upon a fireplace mantlepiece, with pictures of over a dozen children wrapped parentally in the arms of one or two constant adults.

“I think they adopt or foster them,” Natalia said softly. She felt the hole in her heart like a missing tooth, an invitation to deeper, debilitating grief that she could not, at this moment, even think of entertaining. Alexei offered nothing in response. He followed her out of the home, tracing again the footsteps to the back, unlocked door. The snow was mostly slush, and would likely be gone by mid-afternoon.

They walked another half-kilometer to where the tree-line better hugged the road, giving them a vantage for when their extraction arrived. Alexei used the stuffed parachute pack like a pillow, making them a seat against a large tree. He lowered himself easily, pressing his shoulders against the trunk as he sat.

Settling herself between his legs, Natalia’s back molded to his front, imagining herself and him just like two matryoshka nesting dolls that were popular with the tourists. If she and he were cracked further open, what would they find? For her part, a lonely orphan girl, granted a half-chosen yet half-coerced life of seduction, manipulation, and spy-craft. For his? What she could make of him was that he was American ex-military marksman, a P.O.W. , now serving Russian special forces under the influence of some sort of powerful brainwashing. She thought she remembered that snipers worked in pairs; she wondered who had been Alexei's partner and what happened to him.

At that moment, the reality of her limited options became utterly clear to her. With any mission, she always had that dangerous second path. She could defect. But he didn't have the same choice; Alexei was enslaved and bound to the Asset’s masters. Natalia could not bring herself to leave him stranded, even if they would never kiss or make love again. They were comrades-in-arms and pack-mates; the closest thing that she had to true family.

As they waited, they spoke very little, a few syllables and directions here and there. There was nothing other of use to say in the quiet sorrow of their imminent extraction. Alexei simply wove his gloved fingers in her own, comforting and comforted.

The sound of a vehicle engine eventually neared. She and he stood, parting their bodies with reluctance. It was a black utility van, creeping up the slushy road slowly, with the Romanian equivalent of HVAC lettered on the side.

He scooped up their pack and advanced out of the forest toward the road, waving his hand to catch the driver’s attention.

Within a matter of minutes, they were both riding in the windowless back of the van on seats that faced each other next to the seemingly legitimate shelves of tools and repair equipment. The undercover driver and his partner were not the talkative types, other than to inform them they were being taken next to a debriefing facility in Constanta.

Natalia mostly looked down at the floor or between the driver’s and front passenger's seats at the curving road ahead. 

About forty minutes into their journey, she gazed briefly at the man that had been her lover, daring that. His face was as unreadable as her own. Then he flicked a glance to their escorts, who were both looking ahead. 

Their eyes locked again. Natalia lifted her brow. In a flash, the corner of his lips turned up in a warm smile, and he winked at her. Then his features went back to the neutral visage of the Asset.

She bit her lips hard not to laugh and smile back. After she schooled herself, she let her fingers drift up to her neck, curling her fingers against her throat as if gently tending to an itch.

Alexei was there. He was _still_ there. And that gave Natalia hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are subtle references here to the 1st Cap movie and to a few other popular cable shows. Also a nod to Sebastian Stan. Can you spot them? (Easter egg challenge!)


	25. Chapter 25

The three hour journey on back roads and then paved highways brought the van to the port of Constanta, a vast industrial shipyard. The driver weaved his way through the containers and the cranes, until they came to a dock with a half-loaded cargo vessel. The vehicle slowed to a halt and the back doors were yanked opened for them. Four muscled escorts awaited them.

“The girl first,” came an order in Russian from the lead, a brawny woman with a red beret.

Natalia resisted meeting eyes again with the Asset as she rose and slipped out into the afternoon sun. She had to remember who she was to them, who he was to them. She had to summon the masks and the lies.

The red beret lead while the other three brutes with electrified batons each took point at the Asset’s three, six and nine, almost as if he were a hostage. By the sound of his steady footsteps, the Asset was unconcerned.

They were lead into the bowels of the vessel and finally taken into some sort of dingy conference room. Natalia’s primary handler, Mrs. Vitt, was present; she sat next to some man in uniform with enough stripes and hammers and sickles on his jacket to be some sort of high-ranking military man. There was also a few other attendees of the scientific and technical persuasion by the looks of their bodies and their manner of dressing in white lab coats.

Their escorts arrayed themselves around the room, but not before the lead pulled out two chairs for them to sit. No windows, one exit behind, guarded by two of them. Certainly both she and the Asset were taking stock of the situation as they took their seats at the table.

It was High Rank that spoke initially. She had to readjust to the Russian. “The mission is a success. Stambolic is neutralized, and our Yugoslavian friend is grateful and indebted. You are both to be commended for your effectiveness. Our sources indicate that the helicopter that chased you was MI-6. The official press is that it was an unfortunate mid-air collision between two civilian aircraft. Your contact was a surprise welcome. Much has been invested in you both.”

She glanced around the table, gauging micro-expressions. It was Mrs. Vitt that spoke next. “Natalia, what can you tell us of the time between the helicopter crash and now?” From that tone, she already knew Vitt was in a generous mood.

Natalia shifted in her seat minutely, preparing herself. “The Soldier performed admirably, jettisoning us from the helicopter as the missile struck. We landed in the mountains, and a snow storm came in. He found shelter and both of us stayed put until it melted, then we got to lower ground. The house I called from was unoccupied. No detection. Covers intact.”

High Rank set his eyes on the Asset. “Do you agree with this report?”

“ _Da_ ,” he confirmed. “All objectives met. But the girl is young. Too young. Little skills. She lived but with my help.”

Mrs. Vitt seemed eager to defend her charge. “The Serbs call Natalia something now: _Black Widow_. The JSO agents witnessed her kiss her mark before his end. Think of the rumors in the halls of power. Think of the fear.”

Natalia just lifted an eyebrow, still meeting her handler’s gaze. No weakness. Control was rewarded. “I wanted to leave an impression,” she confirmed. “As for the storm, I survived it and so did the Asset. He was wounded, and I patched him up.”

“So you did, my dear,” Vitt soothed, addressing her in person again. “Natalia, you deserve a reward. Name it.”

Natalia leaned back and looked to the low and plain ceiling. Even at port, did the boat sway? She felt pulled by tides, rocking. Still, she kept her focus. She had to be very, very careful now. Rewards could also be traps.

“The Soldier is right,” she blurted. “I don’t know enough.” She met eyes with her handler again. “And his Russian stinks.”

Vitt leaned in, intrigued. “What are you suggesting, Natalia?”

Natalia shifted in her seat, pressing herself away from the table. She had to sell this; it was imperative. “I need more practical training. Marksmanship, knife-work, the operation of ground and air vehicles. The Soldier can teach me. And I can tutor him to speak the mother-tongue as Mother Russia deserves.”

Mrs. Vitt looked uncertainly at High Rank. 

Natalia continued, scoffing, “What? You want him to continue to report like this?! In three or four words at a time? Like a three-year-old? Really?!”

High Rank then looked to Lab Coat, who fidgeted but said: “We can rewrite the Asset’s memory protocol to retain it. Secondary language acquirement is coded with the other level-three synaptic patterns.”

So it was more than amnesia; more than ideological brainwashing. It was neurological manipulation. Natalia devoured all the details that they offered. If she looked again at the Asset, she would give the game away. So she just folded her hands together on the table and squared her shoulders; she did not blink.

High Rank frowned, looked directly at his investment, the American who stared blank-eyed at the wall. “A month,” the official declared. “The Academy can have him for a month, to train and be trained. This girl’s access to him is authorized.”

High Rank turned slightly and conferred with Lab Coat. The pale, bloodless man approved. “Four weeks is within tolerances. I will order the technicians to deliver a chair to the Academy and a copy of the Soldier’s last three-and-above baseline, in case he should malfunction and needs to be reset to the pre-mission parameters.” 

“Very well,” the aging veteran agreed. “I hope you use the Asset wisely, Ursula. It’s one thing to bring him in for the occasional voyeuristic side-show with the innocents, even if it is profitable with certain clients; it’s another for him to instruct your swallows on becoming lions.”

Whatever was Vitt’s reply was completely irrelevant. Natalia secretly reveled in her victory but let none of it show on her face, the line of her body. The Asset, of course, had nothing to say. He simply accepted his orders.

Her handlers had made a terrible and grave mistake. Natalia wasn’t a swallow at all. Nor a lion. Not even a spider. She was a wolf; and she was the least of her kind.

**Finis.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consider this "Season 1" of a three-part story arch. Continue on to "Wolves at the Door, Part II" of this series.


End file.
